


almost a thing that my heart could endure

by ongreenergrasses



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, An exploration of Nicky's love for Joe, Anger, Between Rage and Serenity, Canon-Typical Violence, Declarations Of Love, Happy Ending, Historical References, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Multi, Nicky also has a LOT of rage stored in him, Nicky has some Catholic Guilt™, Pre-Canon, Repression, Slow Build, and my favorite tag of all, as in...extremely slow, eventually, have to work through that aforementioned guilt and repression first, some amazing repression on both sides actually, some historical inaccuracies as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26190706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ongreenergrasses/pseuds/ongreenergrasses
Summary: "God gave us these stories so that we may know the meaning of love, Nicolò. Love should bring you nothing but joy."...Or, the agonizing story of Nicolò learning to love himself and then realizing what it means to love a man such as Yusuf al-Kaysani.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 271
Kudos: 622





	1. Si Tú Supieras Compañero

Nicolò never wanted a wife. His older sisters, in all their well-intentioned, well meaning, incredibly irritating glory, had brought up suitable women for him since he was about eight years old, but he did not want a wife for many reasons, and he did not hold back in elaborating on them to his mother and sisters.

Nicolò may have been lacking in several respects (he eschewed school, more often snuck out to cause trouble in the streets with other boys; he struggled in Latin, preferring instead to speak his native language at school on the rare occasions he went; he had never taken much care to pay attention in church, and had only a passing knowledge of the basics), but he did understand how people should be treated. He knew that what his father did was not right. He dreaded the rage dwelling within his father – it was a rage that caused his father to shout at Nicolò until his ears rang, a rage that caused his father to hit his mother until she stopped moving, a rage that caused his father to do unspeakable things to his youngest sister, Bianca Maria, things that made her fling open the door to Nicolò’s bedroom in the middle of the night and crawl into bed with him and sob into his shoulder. All he could do at these times was hold her until she stopped crying, but this cemented Nicolò’s conviction that he should never take a wife. The anger that his father carried, that cold fury that simmered and simmered until he exploded into violence, was something that Nicolò also felt inside himself. He felt it every time that he laid eyes on his father, he felt it when his friends talked in disparaging terms about women, and sometimes he felt that rage for no good reason at all. He learned to control his temper, and he vowed to never take it out on a woman, but he felt that the risk was too great. After all, he saw every day what happened when rage could no longer be suppressed.

Bianca Maria was promised to a man twenty years her senior when Nicolò was sixteen and she was ten. Their father had arranged the match. She left to go to live with her new in laws and she did not cry, as she was too old to cry now. Nicolò hugged her and did not tell her that he loved her because that was not done in their family. His mother, however, did cry, and his father shouted at her until she stopped. With his little sister gone, and along with her, the outlet that she had provided, their father became worse and worse in his violent tempers. Nicolò could not protect Bianca Maria any longer, so he often jumped in front of his mother and got the black eye instead. His mother lectured him about this endlessly. “You are my only son,” she said, “you can do much better with yourself than protect me.” Somehow, he disappointed her more in his efforts to keep her safe.

(There was one last thing, one last moment, one last mistake that made him convinced he would never take a wife. He did not speak of it. He did not think of it, except for in the dark, because when he was a child, he was convinced that in the dead of night God could not hear him and know his private thoughts. He knew that his mistake was not enough to prevent him from having a wife, but even as a child, and then as a teenager, when he had – he had –

He knew, in his heart, that he could not love a woman the way that a wife should be loved. Nicolò was not cruel, and he would not subject himself or a woman to a façade of love that was not true.)

Eventually, he could not hold out on the pressures from his mother and sisters any longer. They wanted him to get married, to carry on the family name. They wanted him to start a family and a life, even though he was young, and Nicolò was running out of excuses.

As a last resort, he reexamined his beliefs on God. Having concluded that they were just enough for him to not feel like a fraud, he reaffirmed his slim conviction in the Divine, packed his bags, and ran off to a monastery. His elder sisters were all quite exasperated. He knew that Bianca Maria, however, would understand. She was the only one who knew how the rage in their family boiled deep under their skin, she was the only one who had seen their father approach their mother, and her, in ways not befitting any man. She knew why he had left, and she also knew, in her own quiet way, the most personal of his reasons as to why he had vowed to never take a wife. The monastery was perhaps the worst fit for Nicolò he could have imagined, but he made the best of it. He took his rage out on God, decided it was about time he learned to read, and his sisters stopped bothering him with matchmaking.

It came as a great shock to him when the first letter from Bianca Maria arrived at the monastery five years after his arrival. From then on, Bianca Maria wrote to him constantly. He wasn’t sure if it was allowed to receive letters, as the practice itself was uncommon, but none of the monks seemed inclined to halt their correspondence. She was alright, as she had come to love her husband, and that blessing alone reaffirmed Nicolò’s belief in the Divine. She had learned to write and to read in Latin at the urging of her husband, something so rare Nicolò would have never imagined it; she was conducting all of the affairs within her household, as her husband was a merchant and often gone for his work; and she was firm with him that she would have only two children, as she had never wanted more. Her life had become something she had never expected, and she used the unexpected blessings of her life as a way to encourage Nicolò to also make something of himself. In the end, he finally became ordained as a priest. He didn’t think himself well suited to educating the masses, however, and so he just – stayed. He did not leave the walls of the monastery for fifteen years, and letters from Bianca Maria were how he remained connected to the outside world.

It was in a letter that he learned his mother had died.

Bianca Maria had always been one of the more subtle of his sisters, so he read between the lines of her letter as to his mother’s cause of death, and what he found made him so angry that he went to his room and very, very carefully took the manuscript he had been copying and very, very slowly shredded it into very, very small pieces. He blamed the loss of twenty pages of hard work on an accident – he said that it was unfortunate, tragic, but he had just not been paying attention and had spilled water all over his neatly stacked manuscript. (Every word of this excuse could be considered a lie. It was fortunate that no one knew him very well at the monastery.) Nicolò had never killed a man at this point, and didn’t foresee it for himself, but that did nothing to appease the desire he had to rip his father’s head from his shoulders. Thankfully, before his anger could escalate and result in something truly unfortunate, an adamant official from the Pope arrived and said that it was imperative that they go to retake the Holy Land from its current inhabitants. The messenger referred to these current inhabitants in a remarkably offensive term. Nicolò was still angry enough about his mother’s fate to overlook this, and despite the urging of his companions to remain behind in Genova, agreed to be on the next ship out.

Nicolò had never given much thought to the Holy Land, but he knew Jerusalem belonged to the Christians. Whoever was residing there currently was most certainly not Christian, and in his mind (and the minds of his companions) they did not deserve to be on such sacred ground. It was better this way, Nicolò thought to himself as they finally saw land on the horizon, better that they go to reclaim this land on behalf of God and Christ before anyone was to suffer further due to the rule of nonbelievers and infidels.

That was when he started having visions, because of course he did, and nothing in his life was ever easy. They were all of the same man, a Maghrebi with bright eyes, an easy smile, and a truly remarkable number of – friends? Family members? He couldn’t tell. Then this man joined the army. The army, it seemed, that was destined to meet them. Nicolò started waking up nauseous, had to run off just far enough from their camp that no one would hear him before he was sick. He wasn’t sure if his illness was due to his own fear or this man’s. Either way, he sincerely hoped he wasn’t completely losing his mind and highly doubted he was a saint receiving these visions directly from God, so he kept them to himself.

And then they reached Antioch.

It took approximately two minutes of their first battle there before Nicolò realized he had made a mistake. He didn’t consider himself an expert in the Lord’s machinations, but there was part of him, bone deep, that felt that this was not just, and this was not right, and that (privately, he thought this, in hushed tones, trying to hide it from his comrades and God and even himself) that no God would want parts of this. It was one thing to kill grown men, but it was another thing to kill and rape and steal and hurt women and children. Nicolò was under no delusions that he was a good man, as it was his own, private, selfish, deep anger and desire for vengeance that had led him here to the Holy Land, but there was a line he would not cross. Women, he would not cross.

The first time he saw a man in his company grab a woman, he didn’t think. He didn’t remember what happened, really, but he knew that he hit this man so hard that he cracked his knuckles, and that he smashed this man’s head into the wall until he bled, and that he yelled at this woman to “run, for the love of God, just run”. He doubted she understood his language. She understood enough to run and not see the extent of what he did.

He didn’t know what happened to that man, in theory. (In reality, he knew he had killed him.) It didn’t matter. He may not have ever laid a hand on a woman, he may have vowed to never lay a hand on a woman, but he was with a group that did. His rage against their brutality meant nothing because to the people of Antioch, he looked the same as his companions. They thought him to be the same, to treat their women in the same way, and it made him sick.

At this point he knew God well, but in the face of the ever-mounting horrors of the siege, his prayers became even more sincere. _Please, God, make this easier. Please, God, let us battle as men, let us kill these infidels, and no longer hurt defenseless women and children. Please, God, never let my sisters, never let Bianca Maria, learn what I have done here. Let them think I died with honor._ He stopped dreaming of the Maghrebi man, then, but mostly that was because he stopped sleeping. He knew now he was here to die. It was entirely up to God how and when his time would come, but it would be in an attempt to recapture the Holy Land, and that was a small source of comfort.

Because he hadn’t been sleeping, it didn’t take long. They had moved on from Antioch and were slowly marching towards Jerusalem. They got into a skirmish, which had become something of a daily occurrence on their journey. He got locked into combat with someone who had an odd resemblance to his brother in law, who he also did not like on principle, and over this man’s shoulder, through the blood and the sweat and the hair in his eyes, he saw him.

The man.

The man he’d been dreaming of, the man who had more friends than he’d ever dreamed of, the man who had a laugh that brightened his face.

(In hindsight, his thought process should have been quite telling.)

Nicolò’s concentration was shattered and his opponent took advantage of that to stab him right where it counted, and then when he fell, to cut his throat.

And then, because nothing in his life was ever easy, Nicolò woke up covered in blood and surrounded by corpses. He had about fifteen seconds to take this in before he got stabbed again, this time by the Maghrebi in his dream who was suddenly in much closer range. Although Nicolò might have been generally useless in several things, he had always been good in a fight, and so he managed to grab a discarded sharp object (a dagger? An arrow? A rock? Who knew, at that point) off of the ground next to him and stab the man in the side of the neck.

This time he woke up, again, with the man dead next to him. Nicolò was starting to realize that maybe something had gone awry, but before he really registered what was happening, he was scrambling backwards into corpses and staggering to his feet in a panic, because the man that he had just killed, the man who still had a knife lodged in his neck, was waking up.

Of course he had encountered a demon. Of course God had decided to make this his problem. He was begrudgingly impressed that God had thought him worthy to deal with this challenge (maybe all that quiet, simmering rage within his soul was worth something to the Almighty?) and then he promptly ran out of time to think any more because the man he had killed was on him again, and he was an excellent fighter.

It took about three more days of this, and thirty deaths apiece, for Nicolò to realize that perhaps this was not going to plan. There were ways to banish or kill a demon, he had learned them at the monastery, but he had none of the supplies he needed for the ritual, he didn’t remember the rites, and most importantly, he was exhausted. His opponent looked similarly worn, they were covered in blood and dirt and viscera and only God himself knew what else, and Nicolò’s arms felt too sore to lift a sword one more time, so he did possibly the most colossally stupid thing in this colossally stupid affair and just…didn’t.

He dropped his sword at his feet.

The other man stared at him.

This was a bad move, Nicolò knew, not in part because this man had recently strangled him with his bare hands, but he was simply too tired to go through this any longer. “I’m too tired,” he said. “Let me sleep. I’ll kill you again in the morning.” He wasn’t quite sure what else to do in his quest to kill this man at this point, but perhaps the rest would help him think of something. The man just stared at him, then said something back.

Right.

“I’m too tired,” he said again, and collapsed against a tree to prove his point. Rather than seize this opportunity to stab him again, the Maghrebi retreated to a tree slightly farther away and glared at him from there. He shouted something at him. As Nicolò had not learned whatever language this man was shouting in the last two minutes, he just shrugged. The man cast his eyes heavenward in a gesture Nicolò was infinitely familiar with at this point – he got it a lot, the universal sign of asking the Divine for added patience in dealing with him.

The man pointed to himself, then rattled off a string of words that sounded vaguely as if Nicolò should recognize one or two. He shrugged again. He really was tired, after all. The man took a knife from his belt and threw it at him. It embedded itself in the tree trunk next to his head. Absently, Nicolò wished that it had least gone through his eye, as then he could die, and once the Almighty revived him, feign sleep upon waking. The man pointed to himself again, and then said, slowly, as if he was talking to a child or someone sincerely trying his patience, “Yusuf.”

His name. Nicolò could work with that. “Yusuf,” he repeated, trying his best to copy the other man’s pronunciation, and Yusuf cast his eyes heavenward again. Nicolò knew he was terrible at languages but that was just rude. “Nicolò,” he said, pointing at himself. “I suppose we might as well learn each other’s languages, as we’re going to be stuck with each other for a long time.”

He got a knife through his neck for that one.

...

It didn’t take long for Nicolò to realize that his new companionship with Yusuf was going to be difficult. They had no shared language, no similarities, and no common goal except for to kill one another, which they had both rapidly realized seemed to be relatively impossible. Nicolò decided that in the absence of being able to kill Yusuf, it would be prudent to follow him, and Yusuf seemed to have come to the same, equally begrudging conclusion. They were fast running out of new ways to kill each other, so they spent a lot of time glaring at each other instead. They couldn’t go to join their respective armies, so they went back to the one place they seemed to have in common.

They went back to Antioch.

It had been relatively destroyed when Nicolò left and moved south with his company, but now it was completely decimated. As Nicolò could not confirm a plan with Yusuf, he had devised a rough plan of his own: try to find food, maybe a change of clothes, ideally both things, and get some rest while he came up with a new tactic to kill this demon, but he realized now that these goals may be difficult to achieve.

And then, of course, they heard the screaming. It was a woman’s screaming, and after all this time in conflict, they knew what that particular scream meant. They looked at each other and then both took off running, almost coincidentally to the same place (neither of them knew each other’s character, after all, and as Nicolò knew that Yusuf was a demon, he half expected Yusuf to be running in a different direction), and there, of course, they found what they had expected.

Nicolò was not a good man, nor was he particularly good at carrying out God’s plan for him, due to Yusuf’s continued existence, but he was a predictable man, and he had a predictable line that he refused to cross. So to him, what he did next was no surprise, grabbing the man (a fellow soldier from his country, by the look of it) by the nape of his neck and dragging him off of a young woman, one who must be the same age as Bianca Maria, his dearest sister, and only that realization grounded him enough to turn and yell at Yusuf, “help her, get her out of here,” and hope that he understood before beginning the single-minded task of making this man’s death as painful and prolonged as possible.

He had blood in his eyes by the time he had finished and scrubbed at them furiously as he turned back to his new companion. He was taken aback – Yusuf was still glaring at him, with all the ferocity Nicolò had come to expect, but there was no longer pure hatred in his eyes. Mostly hatred, yes, but now there was a hint of something else. They regarded each other for a long, long moment. Blood was still dripping off of Nicolò’s sword. Then Yusuf jerked his head, gesturing down the alleyway, and Nicolò carefully followed him down the deserted street.

Soon enough they were in front of a door, one that Yusuf opened with a practiced upward twist of the handle and a well-placed shove from his shoulder, and then they were in a house that resembled many of the others in Antioch – destroyed, with objects spilled all across the floor, and soot on the walls from where furniture had burned. Yusuf gestured to himself, and then to the space around them, and looked Nicolò directly in the eye to make sure that he understood when he said, “my house”.

Nicolò leaned over and threw up all over the floor. He heard Yusuf groan, and then erupt into a steady stream of cursing. (Nicolò was a priest but he was also a soldier, he knew swearing when he heard it.)

Eventually, a bundle of clothes slammed into him. The hatred was back in Yusuf’s eyes.

They changed their clothes quickly and took all the weapons left in the house, strapping them to their hips, their backs, tucking them up their sleeves and into their boots. Yusuf grabbed Nicolò by the collar of his shirt and yanked him closer, winding a scarf around his head in a practiced manner to cover up his hair, then gestured to his eyes, cursing again under his breath. “I know that my eyes are a problem,” Nicolò snapped, which earned him an elbow to the stomach that he somewhat agreed he deserved. They took everything of value out of the house – the remaining food, the money Yusuf had hidden under the mattress, the silver incense holders that thieves had left behind. Nicolò pretended that he did not see Yusuf tuck several things inside his shirt, close to his heart. Yusuf set a fire in the middle of the main room, threw the remaining rugs and the blankets on it to make it catch, and then they walked away.

...

(They never went back to Antioch again. It was too raw, too much anger, a place where too many horrible things had happened. They moved forward, but Nicolò knew that Yusuf had never fully forgiven him for what had happened in Antioch.)

...

They started to walk, and since Nicolò had no idea where they were going, and no sense of direction anyway, he asked where they were going via exaggerated gestures and pointing several days in.

“Baghdad,” Yusuf said shortly, and he didn’t need to add, even if he had been able to, _You are coming as well, as you seem to be following me._

And that was where they spent their first years together. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many a better writer than me has been sucked back into writing due to this movie, and here i am now, joining their ranks
> 
> this chapter title courtesy of ROSALÍA
> 
> edit: i speak Spanish, not Italian. so i went and fixed the accent marks
> 
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.


	2. baghdad, 1099/baghdad, 492

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: the delightful @oriyatea has pointed out an issue with the chapter title that i have now fixed! i am very glad someone involved in this undertaking has brains because i certainly do not when it comes to dates

They decided to live together once they reached Baghdad. Neither one of them was particularly happy about this decision, but at the same time, it seemed to be the only reasonable solution that they could come up with. They had already been set upon twice during the journey from Antioch to Baghdad and united by the common goal of not dying, they worked well together. They still could not communicate, but they eventually, through hand gestures and pointing and shouting louder and louder in frustration when the other did not understand them, managed to eke out a truce of sorts. Both of them recognized that they, for better or for worse, were safer together, and that it would do them well to remain as unassuming as possible so that their gifts were not discovered by others. Nicolò had known from the minute that they awakened together from death that theirs was a gift that must be kept as secret as possible, for he did not think that their blessing of continued life would be received well or used for good by anyone besides themselves, and although he could not speak to Yusuf, he gathered from his new companion’s attitude that he felt much the same. Yusuf managed to communicate that while Nicolò’s complexion was not so unusual for the region, his eyes gave him away as a foreigner, and as such, Nicolò would need a companion if he was to survive in the region for much longer. Although Yusuf seemed certain that he would be better off if he left Nicolò behind in the dirt somewhere to fend for himself, he also made it no secret that he expected Nicolò to come with him, and that they would stay together in some odd, antagonistic arrangement.

Nicolò had never seen a city like Baghdad. He was used to the dirt and the quiet and the small, small houses he had seen in Genova. Baghdad was the opposite – full of people, markets, mills, ships. Nicolò spoke none of the languages he heard around him, but he knew enough to tell that the language Yusuf spoke to him was just one of many that he heard as they went through the city. He kept tripping just because he was staring too much at everything around him, and after nearly falling several times Yusuf muttered a curse under his breath, grabbed his shoulder, and dragged him forward to keep him moving.

They found a small house inside the Round City, close to the Basrah Gate. Yusuf somehow managed to charm the owner into renting it to them before Nicolò fully registered what was happening and they had barely set down their things before Yusuf pulled out the money they had brought from Antioch, used their new language of pointing and speaking slowly to tell Nicolò, “Don’t go anywhere,” and was gone until sundown. (Nicolò ended up sitting on the floor with his head in his hands for most of that day. In hindsight, he did not know if he spent all that time praying, but he certainly called upon God to deliver him from this demon he was saddled with and deliver him from this cursed torment that he was living.) Yusuf came back laden down with food and cooking pots and blankets and rugs and things that Nicolò, quite truthfully, would have never thought to purchase for a house, and they managed to set up the basics of what was to be their home while staying at least an arm’s length away from each other at all times. Yusuf claimed the one alcove of the house for his bedroll before Nicolò realized what he was doing, and then glared at him until Nicolò gave up and set his things down as far away from Yusuf as was possible, which was directly to the side of the front door.

Even after moving into the house in Baghdad, they’d continued to attempt to kill each other. It became lackluster about three years in, and then they reached a point where killing each other was only used as punctuation or emphasis about a particular grievance. They tolerated each other, but more than that seemed like asking for too much.

The other reason, perhaps, why they stopped trying to kill each other unexpectedly was because after three years Nicolò was fluent enough in one of Yusuf’s languages to consistently communicate with him. Yusuf preferred two separate languages, but one, Tamazight, he used more frequently to yell at Nicolò, and so Nicolò had naturally learned that first. His Arabic was slower to come and his accent remained atrocious – “and always will be,” Yusuf reminded him, “my language is not suited to your filthy invader tongue.” Nicolò suspected that Yusuf understood more of his language than he let on, but Yusuf refused to speak any form of Zeneize to him, and so Nicolò was forced to learn Yusuf’s language if he wanted to have a conversation. It was petty, but Nicolò thought privately that maybe, Yusuf could be allowed a bit of pettiness. Both of them had, after all, been given the same gift by God, and unfortunately, their God given task of killing each other had become much more difficult than Nicolò could have anticipated. Nicolò was certainly exhausted by it.

It was five years into their cohabitation when Nicolò asked if he thought they should continue to live with each other. Yusuf scoffed at this. 

“As you seem to be determined to plague me until the day I die,” Yusuf said, “it is best that we just stay within the same household so that I am not cursed by seeing you unexpectedly.”

“The true curse is that God determined that I am the one who must rid the earth of you.”

“Oh, how I hate you,” Yusuf said cheerfully, taking the last sip of his coffee. Nicolò poured him more out of habit.

“It’s because you’re a demon,” Nicolò informed him. “It is impossible for you to like me, as I am not one of your kind.”

“If I am a demon so are you, Frank scum,” Yusuf retorted, “and you are as likable as a dead mule in the street.”

…

Nicolò kept to himself during their time in Baghdad. He did not sleep – perhaps, along with all the other misfortunes in his life, most notably the one that had saddled him with a demon that was seemingly impossible to kill, God had forsaken him in terms of sleep. Early on, he began to walk throughout their neighborhood during those nights of sleeplessness. It was generally quiet, but sometimes he would encounter men intent on doing terrible things to women, and as a matter of principle, he was obliged to kill them (or at least severely maim them). Yusuf had at first attempted to dissuade him of this, but Nicolò felt that this particular usage of violence was something he had a talent for. At the very least, if he could not do the task set to him by God, he could protect those who were trying to live normal lives. Soon enough, he garnered enough of a reputation that he was no longer eyed with open hostility, just suspicion.

There was work to be done in Baghdad, because there was always work to be done. Nicolò learned, as he began learning Arabic, that some of the larger buildings he had seen when they first arrived in Baghdad were libraries and medical schools. (Nicolò did not know what the word for ‘library’ was in his own language. He did not know if Zeneize even had a word for it, but if there was one at the time, he did not learn it for hundreds of years.) He had loved copying manuscripts at the monastery, and he wondered if he could perhaps secure employment doing the same thing at these libraries, but he only spoke Arabic and could not read or write it. Plus, his spoken Arabic was poor enough that he knew he would not be trusted with such employment, and he accepted a job doing basic accounting after he found a merchant trusting enough (his version) or stupid enough (Yusuf’s version) to hire him.

He kept going back to the libraries. He did not tell Yusuf this, but as soon as his Arabic was good enough, he finally went inside and asked one of the students at the counter if there were any manuscripts in Latin. She laughed at him, and it could have been for many reasons, but then she said “yes, of course, we are educated people, you know,” and Nicolò did not think he had ever been more embarrassed in his life. Nevertheless, she brought him to a back corner and showed him where the Latin manuscripts were kept.

Nicolò knew that Yusuf wrote, or drew, or something, for he had paper scattered about the house in precisely the most inconvenient places at all times. Looking on the rows and rows of manuscripts in the library, more than he had ever seen in his life, Nicolò got an idea, because if nothing else, this new world that he lived in valued learning. “May I copy these manuscripts when I finish reading them?” he asked the student, and she just nodded.

“Why else would they be here?” she said, with the usual tone of put-upon resignation that people took with Nicolò, and he just thanked her.

He came back to the library almost every day after work. Nicolò had never been a good student and did not expect that he would suddenly become one now, but he read each manuscript carefully and when he found one he particularly enjoyed, he would use one of the sheets of paper he had smuggled out of the house and copy down the parts he had liked the best to keep with him. It was sentimental, and he knew that yes, God would frown upon him for having such worldly possessions, but he also hoped that perhaps the Almighty would respect Nicolò’s new dedication to learning. ( _You are not learning the Word of God, though_ , something would insist in the back of his mind, _you are indulging in something you have foresworn, this is not knowledge you need or deserve to have, the only knowledge you need is that of God’s laws and God’s will._ ) He thought that Yusuf did not notice his new activities, but one night, Nicolò came home with two precious pages of a text on medicine tucked against his side to find a large sheaf of paper, similar to the ones Yusuf kept, prominently placed on his bed.

“You are not subtle,” Yusuf said when Nicolò raised an eyebrow at him. “I also cannot begrudge you for trying to become more educated.” His voice was softer than Nicolò had expected.

“Thank you,” Nicolò said quietly, and he started to leave the copies he made around the house. Yusuf never read them where Nicolò could see, but the copied pages began to migrate around the house as much as Yusuf’s own sheets of paper did, and Nicolò took that for what it was worth.

So Nicolò went to his work doing the accounts for a merchant, and spent evenings in the library, and walked the streets at night when he could not sleep. There was a small church that he went to, sometimes, but now he preferred, much like Yusuf, to pray inside their home and keep his faith to himself. He kept to himself during this time, similarly to how he had always kept to himself back when he was…mortal. Things had changed, yes, for that was the will of God, but he accepted the otherwise banal normality of his new life. His one companion was Yusuf, who now seemed to fundamentally hate Nicolò less and rather tolerated him the way one would tolerate a particularly persistent rodent infestation, but besides that, Nicolò knew no one well enough to even learn their names.

But Yusuf – Yusuf was the opposite. In Nicolò’s dreams, he had seen a man who was always surrounded by a vast social circle, and despite their new gift of life and need for discretion, this did not change. Everyone loved Yusuf. Yusuf knew all of their neighbors by name, played with their children without complaint. He came back from the market laden down with things that shopkeepers had given him for free. He spoke Persian like a natural. He made friends at an almost impossible rate, he went out to coffee houses every other night with an entirely new group of people each time, he had three separate families try to arrange a match between him and their respective daughters. Everyone they came into contact with adored Yusuf, intelligent, well mannered, talented Yusuf, and it drove Nicolò absolutely crazy. Yusuf was a demon, an invader. Yusuf had died in his quest to keep Christians back from the land that was rightfully theirs and now seemed to alternate in purpose between vexing and killing Nicolò, and why could everyone else not see him for the demon that he was?

(Yusuf got along so well with everyone that sometimes, when Nicolò walked the streets for lack of sleep, he wondered, _why can we not get along_ – but then he immediately squashed that thought.)

...

It was ten years before Nicolò learned, purely by accident, that Yusuf spoke Zeneize. They crossed paths in the street one day – Nicolò was on his way to the library after work, as was his custom, and had decided to take the route through the market because sometimes the crushing silence and loneliness of knowing just one other person in a city so large got to be too much. He stopped to look at some pens, for his was beginning to fall apart, and as chance would have it, Nicolò turned to his left and saw Yusuf leaning over to speak with a merchant who had the predictable stars in his eyes and hands that lingered slightly too long on Yusuf’s sleeve. (This did not shock Nicolò, for he had learned of Yusuf’s preferences early in their acquaintance. Yusuf was a man who enjoyed company in all respects, and he enjoyed the company of men and women alike. Nicolò had dared to comment, once, and Yusuf had whirled around and stabbed him in the neck, then quite calmly asked, “How dare you judge me, demon?” as Nicolò bled out on the floor. When Nicolò awoke, Yusuf was gone and stayed away for three days, leaving Nicolò to clean up all the blood on the floor. He’d held his tongue after that.)

No, the shocking thing about this scene was that Nicolò heard his native language spilling from Yusuf’s lips as he talked and laughed with this merchant, slightly accented and with slight errors but with a dazzling smile to make up for any mistakes. Nicolò was so shocked that he whirled around and went home before Yusuf saw him, entirely forgoing the library.

“I didn’t know you spoke my language,” Nicolò said that night over dinner. Yusuf had made no secret of the fact that in his eyes, Nicolò’s cooking was one of his few redeeming qualities. Nicolò pretended that this knowledge didn’t affect him.

“Of course I do,” Yusuf said after a minute. “I was a merchant. We’ve spoken of this before. I speak Tamazight, Arabic, Greek, Persian, Latin - ”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nicolò asked, cutting him off.

There were many things that they were still not sure about with each other. It had been ten years, and still Nicolò felt sometimes like they were reliving those first ten days, testing out the ground around each other, poking and prodding until one of them snapped so they could learn where their boundaries lay. But enough time had passed that they did not hate each other anymore. Nicolò wasn’t sure when that had stopped, but he realized that it had when Yusuf looked at him with a hatred in his eyes that Nicolò hadn’t seen in years.

“You came to my country,” Yusuf said very carefully. Sometimes he shouted when he was upset. Nicolò knew instantly that this was worse. “You came to my country, to the city where I had made my home and ran my business, where I had a happy marriage and a happy life.”

“I - ”

“Stop,” Yusuf said. He was still dangerously quiet. “You killed my family. You killed my wife. You burned that city to the ground, killed my people, destroyed countless lives, because of – what? A call from a puppet of God, not even God Himself? You were headed to al-Quds, to Jerusalem, as they call it now, so why destroy Antioch? Just because it was on the way? Just because you wanted to?” He paused. “And then you specifically, Nicolò, you condemn me to live an unnatural life, where the only driving force and reason I can find for this continued blessing of immortality is to try and kill you once and for all?”

The noise from the street filtered in through the windows. Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed for a long, long minute.

Yusuf shrugged and took another bite. “After all of that,” he said around a mouthful, “the least that you could do is learn my language.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for your kudos and your comments. i crave validation but i am also so happy that my work makes you happy!
> 
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.
> 
> on a completely unrelated note, today i learned that halakhically, a cow is a tent


	3. your forgiveness, and other blessings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: dubious historical accuracy ahead. proceed at your own risk

Now that Yusuf had spoken to Nicolò frankly about the – invasion, for that was what it had been – of the Holy Land, it seemed that one of the last barriers between them had been perhaps not removed, but at the very least significantly weakened. Yusuf still treated him similarly, with disparages and jokes and jabs, but now they were never sent in malice, just in jest. Maybe, Nicolò allowed, he had not understood Yusuf’s language very well at first. He had not understood Yusuf or his mannerisms and misconstrued his words to be harsher and born of a crueler place than they actually were. Perhaps he had been too hasty. Perhaps he had been looking for excuses to hate Yusuf.

He must hate Yusuf. He felt so strongly, so deeply about him. It wasn’t the same cold fury he’d felt for his father, instead something hot and bright that filled him up so completely that he was overwhelmed by it. Nicolò must hate him, and if he did not, he was jealous of him. Jealous of how easy it was for Yusuf to move through life, how quickly he made friends, how full of life and joy he always seemed. Jealous of how despite all of the hardships Yusuf had suffered, he was still generous and thoughtful and giving. In the almost twenty years they had now spent together, Nicolò had learned that yes, Yusuf could be quick to anger, but he was quicker to smile, quicker still to laugh. He was quickest to kindness, and quickest to put everyone in the entire world, it seemed, before himself.

They had to leave Baghdad after they had spent nineteen years there. Nicolò didn’t want to leave Baghdad, with its life and its libraries and its culture of learning, but he knew it made sense. He was solitary enough that few people had begun to take notice of him, but with Yusuf’s extensive social circles, people had begun to give them sideways glances and mutter under their breath about magic or luck or a curse from God that was keeping them the same. They looked the same, sounded the same. They had yet to find a new grey hair on their heads – Yusuf had a few grey hairs, tucked away behind his ear, that he pulled out frequently and cursed at every time they grew back, but Nicolò had none. They still did not know much about their gift, but there came a time when they sat down over dinner, not expecting another serious conversation, and Nicolò, in an apt demonstration of his typical tact, blurted out, “I don’t think we’re aging.”

Yusuf looked at him, his lips pressed into a thin line. “We’re not,” he agreed. “I think we will need to leave soon.”

They left Baghdad without most of their possessions. They only had two horses so they had sold everything they could not carry, told the owner of the house that they were leaving, and took all the money they had saved over the years with them, along with the barest essentials. Before they were even out of the city gate, Yusuf had stopped his horse, leapt down from the saddle, and offered his heaviest cloak to a girl who sat shivering in the morning chill. Nicolò wanted to scream. They had brought very little with them so Yusuf was definitely not giving away something that he could spare. Yusuf was so quick to put others first, thinking nothing of himself or his future discomfort, and –

“Right,” Yusuf said, already having tucked his cloak around the girl and remounted his horse while Nicolò had sat lost in thought. “Why are you making that face?” He leaned over to try and elbow Nicolò in the side but it turned into more of a simple brush of their arms. Nicolò barely restrained himself from yanking his arm back – Yusuf’s touch burned so hot that he couldn’t stand it.

“You will be cold at night,” Nicolò said finally. Yusuf waved him off.

“In a week’s time we will reach an outpost, I can buy another cloak there if I need to. It is no matter until then.”

 _But it does matter,_ Nicolò wanted to say, _you hate the cold, and you grumble and whine and complain in the mornings anyway, and you would stay tucked in bed all morning if I did not wake you for prayer,_ but what came out of his mouth was infinitely more mortifying, because Nicolò blurted out with no finesse whatsoever and far more hostility than he intended to, “Then you must take my cloak until then!”

Yusuf was not fully laughing at him but he was close to it. “My dear Nicolò,” he said, using a tone that he had often taken with him since the first day of their acquaintance where he was clearly asking the Divine for patience with him, except this tone had evolved to contain significantly less hostility and more warmth, “if I take your cloak, then you will be cold, and I know that despite all these years you are still not accustomed to this climate.”

Oh, how this man irritated Nicolò.

“Perhaps not,” he said, “but I am accustomed to the cold, and you so hate to be cold in the mornings.” He paused to gather his thoughts. Nicolò had never been a man of many words, and in Tamazight, he spoke even fewer. “I would not see you suffer unnecessarily,” he concluded. He was sure he was flushed bright red, but he couldn’t help it – Yusuf was so infuriating, never really planning anything, never thinking of himself, and it made Nicolò feel as if he was losing his mind. 

“Thank you, Nicolò.” Nicolò could barely stand the tenderness in the way Yusuf said his name, why would Yusuf thank him for something so simple, why did the man never think of his own comfort? “If I freeze tonight,” Yusuf said, the natural cheer returned to his voice, “then maybe I will take you up on your offer.”

…

Yusuf did not take Nicolò’s cloak on the first night. Nor did he take it on the second night of their travels. However, on the third night, the wind picked up and as a result, the normal desert cold turned into an almost biting chill. They slept in turns that night, as they had long since learned to do when exposed in the open, and Yusuf took the first watch, as was his habit, and woke Nicolò by poking him insistently in the shoulder.

“Your hands are freezing,” Nicolò grumbled, and Yusuf laughed at him for that. Nicolò had thought in his youth that it was folly to describe eyes as ‘sparkling’, but he had not known Yusuf in his youth. Even on nights such as tonight, with only the smallest remnant of a fire, a bitter wind, and no moon to speak of, Yusuf’s eyes still danced.

“Take this,” Nicolò said, and threw the cloak that he had been using as a blanket at him. “Your hands are cold enough to wake the dead.”

“Perfect for waking you, then,” Yusuf retorted, and Nicolò quickly tried to kick him in the shins. Yusuf jumped back before he could make contact.

“Go to sleep, you demon,” Nicolò said, pushing himself upright and going to look in their saddlebags for more wood to stoke the fire.

“Even the cruelest words are a blessing from your lips, heathen.” Yusuf was still laughing as he kicked Nicolò’s sword away from where he had lain down, almost exactly where Nicolò had just been sleeping. “Don’t make me sleep next to this thing, it will do you no good if we are attacked and your sword is beneath me on the other side of the fire from you.”

“Even asleep I stand a better chance than you, armed with your customary writing instrument and your sluggish nighttime reflexes.”

“Some of us enjoy the finer pursuits in life, although I know your favorite art form is to hack at things. If it was not so late, I would advise you to go hack at that bush and relieve some of that pent-up creative energy of yours.”

Nicolò could usually keep up with their banter, but this evening he was tired enough that he said something too revealing. “I did use to decorate the manuscripts I copied,” he said quietly.

“When was this?” And this, here, this was why Nicolò could not handle saying such personal things, because when he did the kindness in Yusuf’s voice was too much to bear.

“A long time ago. After I learned to read but – before we met.” _Before I came to your country. Before I tried to rid it of people like you, because I thought you were undeserving to live on such sacred ground_. “I practiced at first by writing to Bianca. My sister. But once my penmanship was good enough, they let me copy the manuscripts, and once I proved myself at that, I was allowed to decorate them. I liked that work the most, out of everything I did in my time at the monastery.”

“I can imagine that you would,” Yusuf said. “May I ask you something?”

And Nicolò was frozen. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know what paralyzed him, he didn’t know what was sending a cold fear right to the center of him. Finally, he just nodded.

“What language did you write letters to Bianca in?” Her name was strangely accented on Yusuf’s tongue.

“Latin, it was always Latin.”

“Do you know how to write Zeneize?” And it was said so kindly, so gently, that Nicolò couldn’t find it within himself to bristle at it, so he just shook his head. Yusuf sighed. “I do. I could teach you, if you’d like.”

“I have no one left to write to.”

“Nor do I,” Yusuf said thoughtfully, “but sometimes it is a comfort, nonetheless. And it is your first language, after all. I would like to help you keep it.”

“I still think in Zeneize,” Nicolò confessed. “Sometimes I dream in it. But I do not speak it so much, not anymore.”

“And for that, I must beg your forgiveness.”

“What?” Nicolò had never put the new log on the fire, distracted instead by their conversation, and now there was so little light that he could barely make out the shape of his friend on the other side of the fire. _His friend, and when exactly had that happened?_

“For refusing to speak to you. You know that I can understand you, but I was…I was so angry. For what you did. What your people did. But for me to take it out on you by pretending not to understand you, by condemning you to isolation and forcing you to learn my language, was cruel and unbecoming of a man.” Yusuf’s voice was remarkably steady. “I have asked God for forgiveness for that cruelty so many times, but I have been too cowardly until now to ask for your forgiveness. And only now, in this darkness, am I brave enough to speak to you about it, because I cannot see your face.”

Nicolò did not know what had possessed his body, maybe the Almighty himself, but suddenly he was kneeling in front of Yusuf, close enough to touch, and certainly close enough to look him in the eye. (Nicolò needed to look at him or he would not be able to say what he meant to, what he needed to after all these years. Yusuf was not the coward of the two of them.)

“Your actions were justified,” Nicolò said. He took a deep breath. “It was mine that were not. I, too, have called upon God these past years, but I have asked Him to forgive my wrongs, and how badly I misunderstand His word and was manipulated by simple men into killing and destroying. I can only beg your forgiveness for what I have done to your home, and how I have continued to follow you and plague you, and how I have cursed you with my eternal life and my eternal presence that must be a daily reminder of the horrors that have happened to you and to your people. I can only hope that someday you will forgive me, but I do not expect you to, and maybe, someday, I can find a way to repent before God for how I have behaved.” He swallowed. This next part was to be the most difficult, but it was something that he needed to say, for both of them.

“But the Almighty’s opinion does not matter to me so much anymore. Not if it was His will that brought me and my people to destroy your people and your home. Your forgiveness – would be more of a blessing, and better than the greatest kindness, than God could ever grant me.”

There was a long silence.

“My dear Nicolò,” Yusuf said finally, “In all our time together, I do not think I have ever heard you say so much all at once.”

“I suppose,” Nicolò said, “but I needed to be close enough to you that you could see me for it. Otherwise I would not have had the courage to do so.”

“Yes,” Yusuf said. “Now I can see you.”

Nicolò’s knees were starting to hurt but he didn’t dare move. He could not look away from Yusuf’s eyes even though he could barely see them in the gloom. Yusuf broke their silence again, as he so often did. “Tomorrow, you speak your language to me.” He reached out and took Nicolò’s hand in his own. “And I will begin to teach you to write it.” Nicolò could not stand to feel any more, not right now, so he squeezed Yusuf’s hand once, twice, and then stood up.

“Go to sleep.”

“Take your damned sword with you,” Yusuf said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is a bit late, i was watching Brandi Carlile's concert on veeps
> 
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.
> 
> thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all your kind words and kind thoughts and kind kudos over this past week! the week has been Bad for so many reasons and your kindness has not gone unnoticed. 
> 
> if you're bored and want more friends i do too, come find me on tumblr @ongreenergrasses


	4. in which nicolò shows his hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: @Reyb18 has been very kind, i have clarified points in accordance with their suggestions.

After leaving Baghdad they no longer had a home, and they soon realized after several weeks of traveling that they also lacked a plan about what to do or where to go next, so they spoke and reached an agreement between themselves that it was time to use their gift in whatever ways they could. They were both drawn to the idea of keeping people safe. Nothing large or eventful, but they could smuggle families out of hostile territory, or act as hired protection for caravans of travelers.

They were both accomplished fighters, but Yusuf was first and foremost a merchant with an excellent head for numbers and languages, a charismatic artist and poet, a man who seemed to have a natural talent for everything he tried. This was in firm contrast to Nicolò, who believed that he had only ever been good at about three things in his life, and one of those was tempering his rage into a very effective fighting style. The two of them therefore reached a tacit agreement – Nicolò would always go in the front as they traveled, Yusuf in the back. If they encountered any hostile forces, Nicolò would lead the assault with Yusuf hot on his heels, making sure that no one attacked from behind and picking off whoever survived Nicolò’s initial onslaught. They both hated killing, but Nicolò thought he bore it better. Yusuf smiled less after they had been forced to kill men; his laughter, while still present, rang hollow. The longer they traveled, and the more violence they encountered, the more strictly Yusuf adhered to his prayers, three times a day, combining noon and afternoon, sunset and evening. Nicolò no longer needed to wake Yusuf for fajr. Nicolò hated to kill, but perhaps this was why God had seen fit to bless him with such a gift. Perhaps his calling was to protect people. Protect the people they traveled with. Protect Yusuf, as best he could, from the horror of killing another man.

Over time they began to travel specifically with families. They enjoyed the time spent with such groups the most, and between Yusuf’s kindness and Nicolò’s reserved nature they were able to quickly put families at ease. The children generally split between the two of them, divided easily by their personalities – the shyer ones would flock to Nicolò, and the louder or braver or more artistic or more exuberant children hung on Yusuf’s every word.

“You are so good with them,” Yusuf said one evening, after the latest gaggle of children (two girls, three boys, Nicolò could rattle off their names and ages and favorite colors at the same speed that he could recite the Pater Noster) had been shooed off to sleep by their mothers.

Nicolò waved him off. “When I was young, I thought someday I may want children, although clearly that is no longer God’s path for me. And I spent much of my time with my sister when I was young, she was six years my junior. It is not so hard when you are used to it.”

“I have been out of practice with children for some time,” Yusuf said, poking at the remnants of their small fire with a stick. “Even before we met, I had not – spent time around my children in some time.”

Nicolò truly did not know whether to pry or not. He swallowed and thought carefully about what his next question should be, but Yusuf beat him to it.

“I had two children,” he said. “Safaa and Zayd.” Nicolò hummed to show he was listening. “They are gone, now. Zayd with my wife, in the siege.”

“And Safaa?” The name was clumsy on Nicolò's tongue.

Yusuf raised one shoulder in half a shrug. “We sent her to be with my wife’s family when we first heard rumors of your people coming to our land. She was older, she was always very independent – we thought it was best.”

“She could still be alive,” Nicolò said in an attempt to reassure him, and the glare Yusuf fixed him with told him that was the wrong answer.

“We sent her to al-Quds,” Yusuf said shortly. “She is not still alive.” 

They slowly made their way back towards Nicolò’s homeland. They offered their services at each town they stopped in, and as a result they never stayed in one place for more than a night or two. Winter was beginning to descend upon them, and Yusuf quickly began to grumble about the cold. Nicolò spent most of his own earnings on cloaks and furs to make his friend warm, then lied about how much they had cost. They first encountered snow in Moravia. Yusuf was enchanted with it until he tried to hold some and promptly dropped it due to the chill, cursing as if he’d been burnt. It was an endless source of amusement to the children they were traveling with, and privately, an endless amusement to Nicolò.

Linz, in the Duchy of Bavaria, was where it all came to a head.

They were staying at a small town inn. The inn was owned by a family whose eldest daughter, Adalgesia, had been recently widowed. Nicolò and Yusuf had escorted Adalgesia and her three children back to Linz, and Adalgesia had taken it upon herself to make their stay in the frigid town as comfortable as possible. The barkeep, Adalgesia’s youngest sister, gathered up as many candles as she could find and brought them to their room, and after they ate with Adalgesia and her family, Nicolò decided to take advantage of the increased lighting to work on his Arabic script. He found it as soothing as he had copying manuscripts at the library in Baghdad, but due to their frequent travels he now rarely had the downtime, the lighting, and a place sheltered enough to do so. Yusuf, spirits bolstered by their easy trip and Adalgesia’s kindness, elected to stay for another drink with the family.

“And you are sure you don’t want me to stay with you,” Nicolò said a final time, pausing on the stairs. He was, after all, the one who primarily spoke the language of the family they had traveled with, although Yusuf had been managing well with the few words he did know, hand gestures, and his seemingly endless charisma.

Yusuf laughed at him. (Yusuf often laughed at him.) “Go, I know you are dying for some alone time. I will not be downstairs for so long, anyway.” He winked and Nicolò felt heat rise in his cheeks, which at this point was becoming an alarmingly common occurrence. He was very deliberately not thinking about why this was a common occurrence.

Nicolò had barely made it through the first poem he was painstakingly copying from a selection Yusuf kept at the bottom of his bag before someone was pounding at the door. Once he opened it, he saw both Adalgesia and the barkeep, far less cheerful and far more harried than they had been before.

“Sir, you’d best come sir,” the barkeep blurted out, “it’s your friend, someone tried to try one on with my sister and - ”

Nicolò tried to push past her and down the stairs, but Adalgesia managed to block his path. “You’ll probably want that.” She pointed to his longsword, where it was leaning against the foot of the bed. Nicolò scooped it up and the three of them ran downstairs, where the barkeep quickly led him through the kitchen and to a back door, following the sound of commotion from the street. She opened the door and they peered out to see what was most definitely not a fair fight. It was six against one, but Nicolò supposed that it was just lucky for the men that they had not realized the extent of Yusuf’s capabilities – only four men and he might have fought them off. As it was, it had seemingly become a five man job just to contain Yusuf, but contain him they had, and as Nicolò and Adalgesia watched one of the men hit Yusuf hard with the hilt of a knife in the back of the head ( _right where it counts_ , Nicolò thought) and Yusuf fell in the snow and did not get back up.

The barkeep gasped. Nicolò tried to get a hand over her mouth but it was too late. All six men turned to face them.

“Get inside,” Nicolò said lowly, “bar the door, don’t let anyone in until we tell you to.” She nodded, the whites of her eyes huge and shining in the light pouring from the inn’s window. “Get inside,” Nicolò said again, but by that point one of the men had gotten close enough to hit him and Nicolò was suddenly furious, furious that they dared touch him, and more furious that they had dared to lay a single hand on Yusuf.

The next thing he truly remembered was someone grabbing his forearm and yanking so hard that he nearly lost his balance.

“Nicolò. Nicolò!” Yusuf looked – vaguely concerned. His face was also covered in blood, which made him look vaguely concerning. “That’s enough. You’re done, you’ve done enough.” I pulled on Nicolò’s arm again and Nicolò finally relaxed his grip on his sword hilt. He hadn’t realized he was holding it quite so tightly.

“I - ”

“You killed them all,” Yusuf said bluntly. “Now we have to get inside.” Nicolò looked down. The snow where he was standing was very red.

“There’s blood on your face,” he said to Yusuf.

“There’s blood on your - ” Yusuf waved a vague hand at him. “Everywhere,” he concluded. “Please, Nicolò, we have to go.” Nicolò tried to scrub some of the blood off of Yusuf’s forehead, but it had dried enough that it was almost impossible for him to make any progress. “Please, Nicolò,” Yusuf said again, and he dragged him past the carnage to bang on the back door and shout for the barkeep to let them in. Nicolò didn’t know why he was suddenly having such a hard time focusing. He blinked and blinked again, and then realized he was crying.

“My god, you’re a mess,” Yusuf muttered, using his sleeve to try and get some of whatever was caked on Nicolò’s face – blood, sweat, apparently tears – off. “Spit.”

“What?”

“You’ve got blood on your teeth, you look like a madman. Spit it out.” Nicolò leaned over, tried to spit it out and very nearly vomited instead, and as he was spitting out bile and blood into the snow the barkeep opened the door.

“Get inside,” she hissed. She quickly shepherded them through the kitchen, past the bar, where Adalgesia and her children still lingered, and back up the stairs. Yusuf was practically carrying Nicolò by the time they reached their room. Nicolò had just realized that his inability to focus was in part due to something very wrong with his left eye and the additional pain of a broken ankle. “I’ll bring you hot water so you can both clean up. You can stay tonight but you’ll have to leave early, we don’t want any trouble.”

“Thank you for your generosity,” Nicolò said through gritted teeth, “you have truly gone out of your way to help us.” She smiled at him and disappeared back down the stairs to deal with the water.

“Thank God we managed to charm this family,” Yusuf said, shoving the door open and barely making it over the threshold before they both went down in a heap. Nicolò sat up just enough to kick the door closed with his good leg.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Something is broken,” Yusuf said calmly. He was always very calm when in intense pain. Nicolò could see sweat beading at Yusuf’s temples. “I can’t really feel my legs.”

There was a loud crack. Yusuf groaned. “Maybe less broken now,” Nicolò said.

“I think your eye is still bleeding.”

“Probably.” Nicolò collapsed down on his back again. His ankle hurt like hell. “You are such an idiot, do you know that? Why on earth did you go outside with those men?”

Yusuf groaned again. “They were bothering Adalgesia and her children, and I didn’t want to upset the family by getting into a fight downstairs.”

There was another, smaller crack as Nicolò’s ankle began to realign. “Ugh,” Nicolò said.

“If you throw up on this floor, Nicolò, I will kill you.” Nicolò grabbed the closest thing he could find, which by a stroke of the only luck they’d had all night, happened to be the chamber pot, and threw up in that instead.

“Ankles are so painful,” he said hoarsely.

“Maybe now at least you no longer have blood on your teeth.”

The door swung open and the barkeep dragged in a tub, followed by several buckets of steaming water that she promptly dumped into it. “That’s enough for one of you.”

“Nicolò, you take it,” Yusuf said, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ll help you,” he said, directing this to the barkeep. His accent was thick enough that Nicolò barely understood him, but she just shrugged and motioned for Yusuf to follow her. “Get all that shit off your face,” Yusuf said in Tamazight from the doorway, and then closed the door behind him.

Nicolò normally appreciated the privacy Yusuf tried to grant him in their incredibly intertwined lives, but he did not particularly want to be alone at that moment. _What had he done?_ He could remember nothing, nothing after he had seen that man strike Yusuf and then been attacked himself, nothing except for the blinding rage he had felt. _How dare they hurt him? How dare they torture him like they had, and for what, for the crime of protecting a family?_ It made him angry again just thinking on it, they had no idea of Yusuf’s limitless kindness, of his brilliance, of the light of his laugh. They had no idea what Yusuf was capable of, and they had no idea of the good he did. And why had Nicolò gone upstairs and left him and Adalgesia and the children alone? Why had he not been there to protect him?

“You have got to stop vomiting every time you break a bone, this room smells vile.” Yusuf crashed through the door with a pail of water in each hand, somehow covered in more blood than when he had left. Nicolò practically leapt out of the tub in surprise.

“What happened to you?”

“I moved the bodies,” Yusuf said, setting down his pails of water next to the tub. “It will buy us more time in the morning.” He critically assessed Nicolò. “Are you completely incapable of following a single instruction? You’ve still got all that shit on your face.”

“Lost in thought,” Nicolò said. “Are you angry with me?” He was trying to work out the clumps of something he did not wish to identify in his hair.

“Yes,” Yusuf said, altogether too calmly. Nicolò waited. He had almost gotten one of the larger tangles free when Yusuf shouted, “What were you thinking?” so loudly that Nicolò jumped again.

“Mother of God, Yusuf, people are sleeping - ”

“Are you out of your mind?” Nicolò gave up. It was better, he had learned, to just let Yusuf shout sometimes. “Were you trying to get yourself killed? If you had any sense at all, you would have let me die at the hands of those men, and then I could have revived and come back inside, and we could leave this place quietly with no one the wiser! But no, you had to jump in, you had to cause a complete disaster of a scene, and now we are going to be chased out of town if we do not make a hasty exodus! What happens if they catch us as we leave, or if that family’s kindness runs out? What happens if they want to execute us?”

Nicolò was grateful that there was no earthly way anyone would understand the language that Yusuf was shouting. He waited for a pause – by now, they had done this enough that Nicolò could predict the pattern of Yusuf’s shouting. Yusuf exploded when he was worried, and as Nicolò had a penchant for poor decisions, Yusuf was often worried – and said firmly, “Yusuf, it is ridiculous that you think I would ever let you die if I could stop it.”

“You are a complete idiot,” Yusuf said, “and I hate it when you say things like that.”

“It is my pleasure to say vexing things and to try to keep you alive. In fact, sometimes I believe that those are the two purposes for which God has put me on this earth.” Nicolò was still tugging on the knot in his hair.

“Why do you say things like that, you fool, is this because of how we met?” Yusuf knelt behind the tub, grabbed a strand of Nicolò’s hair, and yanked on it. “Tip your head back.”

“No, it’s because you hate to kill people and I have a talent for it.”

“You do not have a talent for it, Nicolò, you are just - ”

“Efficient. I know.” This was not a new argument.

“I hate to see you in such a rage because of me,” Yusuf said, combing his fingers through Nicolò’s hair. This was not a new practice either. Yusuf’s hair coiled tightly enough in on itself that the dirt and blood and grime that now seemed to accompany them wherever they went did not cause too many tangles, but Nicolò’s hair often got so matted and dirty that he welcomed the help of an extra set of hands.

“I suppose God has seen fit to curse me with my temper.”

“Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise. It does make you uniquely suited to our way of life.”

“Sometimes I feel I would prefer to be suited to another way of life.”

“You should cut your hair off,” Yusuf said, abruptly changing the subject. It was clear that he no longer wanted to speak on such things. “It gets to be such a mess.”

“Maybe I will.” Nicolò tipped his head further back to look at Yusuf. Yusuf’s eyes were so dark, and if he just – if Nicolò could just – their faces were so, so close, and –

Yusuf pushed himself to his feet. Nicolò sank down lower into the water.

“Don’t waste all your time in there,” Yusuf said, “I need help washing these filthy clothes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this week has been...rough. hence here is a chapter to brighten your tuesday, as opposed to the customary sunday update! 
> 
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.
> 
> to my american readers, if you are not registered to vote what are you doing? https://vote.gov


	5. consequently,

They had to leave before daybreak at Adalgesia’s insistence. Although they did not really have the time to make any decisions before they were out on the street, barely dressed with bleary eyes and clutching their bags to their chests, they quickly decided to retrace their steps and go back to the east. They had had better luck and more enjoyable travels there. Besides, they had both been dreaming of the same two women since they’d met, and Yusuf, who was far more traveled than Nicolò, assured him that they would find these women in Rum, as he recognized the city from his time there.

It took some time to get to Rum but once they arrived, it did not take long to find the women from their dreams. They had been sleeping in an inn on the outskirts of the city, only having been in the area for three days, when the door to their room had suddenly flown open in the middle of the night. Nicolò, as was his custom, was asleep on the floor all but blocking the entrance, and upon waking, immediately fell into his normal attitude when startled awake. (He did not have full command of his senses and ended up killing both women before he was conscious enough to recognize them.) Yusuf complained that Nicolò was too impulsive, and Nicolò insisted that there could have been a true risk of harm to both of them if he had not acted as quickly as he did, and so both Andromache and Quýnh awoke to the sound of their bickering.

They all decided to travel together after this first meeting. Andromache had taken an instant liking to Nicolò due to his ‘inability to think’, according to Yusuf, and his ‘excellent instincts’, according to her. Andromache was stately, with the grace, poise, and weariness of someone more than human. Quýnh was livelier, quicker to anger but also quicker to laugh. Quýnh gravitated towards bright colors and had a variety of scarves and sashes stuffed in her bag, Andromache kept her hair tied up tightly in braids and only wore a necklace for jewelry.

It was – nice, to travel with them. It had only ever been Yusuf and Nicolò since the whole affair began, and as a result Nicolò had never truly become lonely. They had moved from their initial hatred to their current close friendship, but there were still many times in their many years of acquaintance that they had become beyond irritated with the other and unable to hold any form of conversation without snapping. It was nice to have new people to sit with, to trade stories with, to spar with. Nicolò, as Yusuf said, did like to hack at things to get his energy out, and as fortune would have it, Quýnh liked to have people try and land a hit on her, so they quickly became sparring companions. It was better training in the end for Nicolò – although he enjoyed practicing with Yusuf, they had been together for many years and as a result Nicolò could easily read Yusuf’s body language, could know his movements before Yusuf telegraphed them. Nicolò and Quýnh trained together the most frequently, but the four practiced enough as a group that soon, instead of their two fighting pairs of Yusuf-and-Nicolò and Quýnh-and-Andromache, they all worked together as a seamless unit.

What the women did with their unique gift of life was markedly different than Yusuf and Nicolò had chosen to do. The two men had always enjoyed smaller jobs, at first settling down and then working with families, but the women liked to think on a larger scale. They liked to seek out the largest battles they could find, entrench themselves on the side they found to be the most righteous, and use their considerable skills in battle and their blessing of life to (usually) bring victory to their chosen side.

Surprisingly, Yusuf flourished in these environments. He confessed to Nicolò one evening that because these kills were less personal amidst all the chaos and carnage, he felt the pain of taking a life a little less. However, they both agreed that they both felt an unpleasant hollowness due to not being able to directly see the positive impact of their actions. Nicolò did not like large battles. He doubted he ever would. They reminded him too much of Antioch, how confused and angry he had been then, how wrong he had been, how deeply he had misinterpreted God’s path for himself. He did not like the man he had been back then. When they were in large battles reminiscent of the ones he had first fought in the Holy Land, he was reminded that in some ways, he was still the same man all these years later.

The longer they fought in these seemingly endless wars, the more confused Nicolò became. Yusuf had remained the more devout of the two even though Nicolò had been the priest, but he had not…there were many reasons Nicolò had not remained as connected to the Almighty after he had received their unique blessing. Yusuf, due to his inherent goodness, saw his continued life as nothing but a gift, and Nicolò knew that he thanked God for it at least once a day. Nicolò was still conflicted about if his gift of life was truly that, a gift. For so long he had tried to help people, convinced that that was God’s true purpose for him. He had protected people and done well at that, but due to the formidable combination of his rage, his loyalty, and his sheer skills in a fight, he and his companions both recognized that his real talent lay on a battlefield. Nicolò personally did not see how his strength in large combat could be considered a blessing or a gift – all he could see was the scores and scores of bodies in his wake. In his nightmares he saw the soldiers he cut down, the lives they would never have, the families left behind to grieve them. Andromache made it a point to tell him how they appreciated him, how they appreciated his talent, how they appreciated his apparent fearlessness, but Nicolò did not share her opinion. At least when they had been escorting families, there had been a tangible purpose to Nicolò’s violence and rage. Like Yusuf, Nicolò had once seen his long life as a gift from God, one that he could use to help people, but his specific ability to kill efficiently, be struck dead, and rise to kill again began to feel more like a curse.

He could not share his misgivings with Yusuf. He knew that Yusuf was not necessarily happy when they fought in these wars, for neither of them were happy when they had to take a life, but he also knew that Yusuf appreciated the impersonality of their current state of affairs and that the personal connections they had made during their travels had worn on him in their own way. So Nicolò could not tell him of his doubts, of the fact that he felt so unmoored. He could at the very least remind himself that his gift was in fact a blessing from the Almighty in some small way if he could continue to protect Yusuf the way he had been doing all these years.

“It is not wrong to love, you know,” Andromache said one day. They were moving between battles this time. Quýnh had felt called to help the people of France, and after hearing again of the stirrings of unrest and another battle in the Holy Land, Yusuf and Nicolò had decided without speaking that they would join them. (Andromache had wanted to go to the Holy Land. Quýnh, ever perceptive, had dissuaded her.) “It is a small consolation in the life we live, to love someone.”

Nicolò raised an eyebrow. They had become fast friends, and the other two had seized on their companionship to force them into doing the chores the four of them all disliked. This time, Quýnh and Yusuf had insisted that the other two do the laundry. Andromache and Nicolò had taken all of their combined dirty clothes to a nearby creek and were scrubbing them with the little remaining soap Nicolò kept carefully tucked away in his bag. “Do explain, Andromache, I think you couldn’t possibly have been less clear.”

Andromache reached over and shoved him, nearly sending him into the stream. Nicolò shoved her back and she hissed at him much like a stray cat would. “Yusuf,” she said. “I see the way you look at him, you know.”

Nicolò was suddenly very cold despite the afternoon heat. He dropped all the laundry he was holding very nearly in the creek and scrambled backward. It was as if he was trying to put distance between himself and her words. “I don’t – I’m not - ” He took a deep breath. “To love him, Andromache, would be a sin. In the way you suggest. To love him so is condemned by God.”

Andromache hummed and wrung out one of Quýnh’s tunics with a deft twist that Nicolò had seen her use on men’s necks before. “God created you, yes?” Nicolò nodded. Her words were still echoing in his ears. “Then why would someone as powerful and as all-knowing as God create someone who was flawed beyond repair? Destined to commit such a sin? If God sees all and knows all, it would be cruel to create you in this way. He would not condemn you like that, Nicolò.”

Nicolò could think of nothing to say to that. Her accusation was still churning in his head. The way he looked at Yusuf, what did that even mean? They had been traveling together for so long that an easy familiarity was a natural development of their relationship. They had an agreement where Nicolò took most of the blows when they fought, but that was due to their respective strengths and weaknesses as fighters. They helped each other in their own ways – Nicolò slept closest to the door, always, because he was a light sleeper and Yusuf often woke up confused and without the reflexes to defend himself. Nicolò did the mending because Yusuf’s stitches were far too big. Yusuf had taught Nicolò all the languages he knew, Yusuf helped to get the tangles out of Nicolò’s hair, Yusuf did the shopping because Nicolò was hopeless at haggling and would always get cheated. They grounded each other. Surely that was what she meant. Surely, she was just referring to the camaraderie they had built over the last fifty years together. (Fifty years, had it truly been so long?)

“Think on it, Nicolò,” Andromache said, clapping him hard on the shoulder and moving to take her share of the laundry back to where Quýnh and Yusuf were laughing at their small camp.

Nicolò finished the rest of the laundry with his mind spinning. He did not want to think on _it_ , whatever that meant, but once Andromache had put the seed in his head, he could not stop. Why would God create him to be so flawed? Why would He curse Nicolò with a sinful heart and bless him with eternal life in equal measure? The purpose he had been blessed with was to protect, to help, and he had been equally blessed with a long life containing the tools to do those good works. But then, by that logic, were his feelings for Yusuf, whatever they may be, truly a blessing as well? They helped him to do his work set forth by the Lord, to protect Yusuf in ways he would not without their friendship. It helped them to work together and live together in harmony. _But God had been clear_ , Nicolò reminded himself, _His word was clear_. A love beyond the friendship they shared, that was an abomination. It had always been a sin, would remain a sin. But Nicolò did not harbor such a love, in any case, so it was no concern of his. It would not be a concern of his. It had never been a concern of his, it would not become one now.

“You took much longer than Andromache, my dear Nicolò,” Yusuf said when Nicolò finally rejoined them.

“I needed time to gather my thoughts,” Nicolò said, briefly squeezing Yusuf’s shoulder in passing. Andromache stared pointedly at the two of them. “The three of you get to be so noisy that I cannot hear myself think.”

“He thinks too much,” Yusuf theatrically whispered.

“One of us has to or we would have died many more times at this point,” Nicolò retorted. Andromache laughed, Quýnh started talking about how excited she was to reach France soon, and things returned as much to normalcy as they could.

...

Except for, as Yusuf said, Nicolò did think too much. The years rolled on, and often Nicolò could shove Andromache’s words to the back of his head due to the hectic pace of the life they lived, but sometimes, he laid awake, staring at the stars, her words running through his mind at a pace he could not track and dredging up thoughts he could not control.

Yusuf was a good man, an impossibly forgiving and kind man. He had all but forgiven Nicolò his wrongdoings and misconceptions. He had allowed Nicolò to follow him through the desert, invited him into his world, shown him a life far better than the one Nicolò had ever known in Genova. For someone so impossibly good it stood to reason that there needed to be a foil somewhere, a weakness, a flaw, but Nicolò could find none, unless…that flaw was Nicolò himself.

The more he reflected on this new theory, the more it made sense to him. At first, Nicolò had believed that God had bestowed his blessing of eternal life simply so that he could kill Yusuf. Perhaps his destiny was still to strike Yusuf down, but in a more subtle way. He could not kill Yusuf, would not kill him, he could barely even think on it without feeling sick. Nicolò could not stand to see him hurt or unhappy, but the real weakness now was that Yusuf knew this about Nicolò. He already relied heavily on Nicolò, and that made him vulnerable. And certainly, Nicolò could not add another point of weakness by letting Yusuf know how dear his friendship was to Nicolò – that could become a pressure point if they were ever captured, another way to exploit Yusuf.

There had to be a more reasonable way of living, a clearer path that the Lord had had in mind when Nicolò was first granted this blessing, but Nicolò felt that he was damned to never find it. He had been neglecting his duty to the Almighty, he had not communicated with God as he should, and in all the killing, he had become tired and his soul weary. He had no idea of what God expected from him any longer, and perhaps that was the most terrifying thing of all. God seemed nowhere to be found, and Nicolò was still so confused, and he shoved Andromache’s idea down, down, down into his soul until it was buried under a maelstrom of trying to understand what he was supposed to do with this gift, or this curse, of never dying.

He awoke with a gasp one night from his latest nightmare, this one featuring a horrible amalgam of the people he had killed and terrible things happening to Yusuf and Andromache wearing a dress for some twisted reason. All three of his companions shot upright immediately, asking if he was okay, if everything was all right, if it had been a bad dream, if he was afflicted with an illness, if he had been injured. “I’m alright, I’m alright,” he reassured them.

He was not alright. He knew, now.

He had to leave.

Nicolò brought it up the very next evening as they ate. “I am growing tired,” he said, “of the killing we do. I need some peace for a bit – I believe it is time to part ways.” Andromache looked at him, shrugged, and refocused on her food.

“We could also use some quiet,” Quýnh said, elbowing Andromache in the side when it was clear that she did not plan to respond to Nicolò. “Perhaps some rest will do us good, we just need to decide when and where to reconvene.”

“I think you’d like Cairo, Nicolò, we could go there first.”

This was going to be the difficult part.

“Ah, I was actually thinking I would go away on my own.”

There was a beat of silence.

“What,” Yusuf said hoarsely.

“What,” Andromache said, suddenly seeming murderous.

“I need to be alone,” Nicolò said, and Yusuf marched over, hauling him upright and dragging him away from the fire so that they could speak without Andromache and Quýnh overhearing.

“We’ve always been together, Nicolò. Always! Since the beginning! It’s just been the two of us, always, why would you want to change that?”

“I know. I know! I just – I need to be alone.”

“Is it something I’ve done? Have I offended you somehow?”

“No, no, you’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing.” Yusuf did not look reassured. “It’s something that I have done, it’s what I have done. What I have become.”

“What you’ve – all right.” Yusuf scrubbed a hand over his face. “All right. How long do you need?”

Nicolò had not thought about that element of their separation, so he said what seemed best in the moment. “Five years.”

“Five years!” They heard Quýnh gasp from beside the fire. “Five years, and where will you go? What will you do? How can you be on your own for so long?”

“I’ll go to Rome,” Nicolò said. He had always wanted to go to Rome.

“Will you be alright on your own?”

“Yes,” Nicolò said firmly. He would most likely not be alright on his own, but he would also not have to worry about how he was weakening Yusuf with his very presence.

“All right. A year.”

“What?”

“A year from today, I’ll be there, outside the Coliseum. Dawn until dusk. If you come to me, I’ll know you are ready to come home. If not, I will be back the next year, and every year after that, until you come back to…us.” _To me_ , Yusuf did not say. Nicolò felt it anyway.

When he could breathe again, Nicolò asked, “the Coliseum?”

“It’s easy to find,” Yusuf said, irritated. “Every year. I will be there.”

“I won’t be there at first.”

“I know.”

“It’s cruel of me to make you wait there, knowing that I will not come.”

“It’s cruel of you to leave me!” Yusuf almost shouted, and immediately looked as if he regretted it. Nicolò’s tongue felt too heavy for his mouth.

“So you are leaving then, Nicolò?” Quýnh had crept up behind them as they were intent in their discussion. It was the smallest Nicolò had ever heard her sound.

“I have to,” Nicolò said.

“He doesn’t,” Yusuf said. “You don’t have to go, Nicolò.”

“I do.”

Quýnh’s lip was trembling. She was very skilled at feigning tears but these ones seemed genuine to Nicolò.

“All right,” Yusuf said again. Nicolò was really starting to hate those two words. “Quýnh, come sit,” and he steered her back to the fire, where she collapsed against Andromache’s side. Nicolò did not rejoin them for a very long time, because he wasn’t sure how to be part of their company after that. He prayed instead, for the first time in what seemed like several years, and he felt something shake loose inside of him from where he was on his knees in the brush. Yusuf did not look at him for the rest of the night.

Nicolò left early the next morning. Andromache hugged him so hard that he felt something in his body crack and gave him one of her favorite hunting knives. Nicolò knew this constituted a gesture of the deepest love from her. Quýnh, who was still crying and most likely had not stopped since the night before, peppered his face with kisses and told him that she hated him. Yusuf said nothing at all, just accompanied him to his horse while the other two began to take apart their camp. They had deliberately not spoken of it where Nicolò could hear, but he assumed their plan was still to continue south.

“I’m sorry, Nicolò,” Yusuf finally said.

“You have got to stop saying that, you have nothing to be sorry for.” Nicolò swung himself up onto his horse. He was ignoring the part of him that was insisting that this was a very bad decision. “If you asked me to stay, I would.”

“I know,” Yusuf said, “which is why I cannot ask you to.” He caught Nicolò’s hand in his and brought their joined hands to his lips to kiss the back of Nicolò’s knuckles, as if he was deserving of all the tenderness in this world. Nicolò could not help himself, he reached out and traced the line of Yusuf’s cheek, his jaw.

“Be careful,” Yusuf said finally.

“You as well,” Nicolò said, and then he kicked his horse and left, just as if it was easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is technically going up on sunday i guess? high holy days are messing with me
> 
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.


	6. [interlude]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is Heavy on the theology, for reasons i ramble on about and justify in the author's note at the bottom, and just contains Nicolò continuously freaking out. this is also where we go off the cliff with the historical accuracy. if you would like to skip this because that is simply not your thing, please feel free to leave a comment or message me on tumblr and i am happy to recap for you!  
> i've also gone and fiddled with the ratings and tags and made them more accurate to the new direction of this, so hopefully they reflect that. again, please let me know if they don't!
> 
> edit: @HMISS has very kindly corrected me on an error in the aforementioned disastrous historical accuracy, the appropriate revisions have been made.

He went to Rome, as he said he would, and found a monastery, because that was all he could remember and all he had done with his adult life before – all of this. It was technically a double monastery, with a nearby convent separated from the monastery by two gates, a courtyard, and a garden. He knew that this arrangement was uncommon, so the place seemed as good a fit for him as any other place, as he was also someone that may be deemed uncommon. The monastery welcomed him with few questions when he explained his past as a priest and that he needed time to reflect. He spent most of that first year on his knees before God, asking for some sign, something, anything, to make the way ahead clearer. There were no signs, which did not really surprise him.

By the end of that first year, he had grown tired of devoting himself to constant prayer and receiving nothing in return, so he began to take a more active role in maintenance of the complex for lack of something to do. (He did not want to return to copying manuscripts, because that work felt too raw and too reminiscent of the many things he was trying desperately to avoid.) Where he had spent a year in the chapel and little else, now he divided his days from the work outside and inside in prayer, which suited him better. However, he had also grown weary of the company of the monks, as he had come to like meeting new people (damn Yusuf, and damn his sociable influence on him) and his work in the neutral territory of the garden between the convent and the monastery soon meant that the nuns, especially the younger ones, began coming out to talk to him. Most likely they rarely saw new faces, as there were many other accommodation options in Rome and so no travelers would stay in the compound. Once they had learned he was a priest, they were even more interested, and he often found himself pulled into long conversations with many of the nuns. They talked about God and Scripture and His word and the state of the world and Nicolò – Nicolò felt like he could breathe again. It was something he knew, something he was accustomed to. It was easier than the life he had been leading, and he was ready for things to be easy again for a short while.

“Why are you so sad, brother?” one of the nuns asked him one day. He had gone to their small chapel, this time, for a change of pace, and it seemed it had fallen on her to replenish the candles and the incense by the altar. As he had only been sitting and not praying, he did not begrudge her the interruption.

“Do I seem sad?”

“You seem very sad, and that in turn saddens me. Being with God should give you nothing but joy.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Nicolò said.

“Then why are you sad? You have joined us, your partners in spirituality, and come to be with God.”

Before, Nicolò could have deflected. He could have come up with a thousand small reasons or a thousand white lies about the reasons for his melancholia, back when he had been living in a way that there were always a thousand small complicating factors for everything. Now, however, here he was, sitting in front of an altar, with a nun standing off to the side and asking prying questions, and there was nothing else he could do, and he certainly could not lie any longer, so he said with shaking hands and a steady voice, “I am sad because I left behind someone I love to come here.”

The walls of the church did not collapse around them. Nicolò was not struck down dead where he sat. The nun did not even look surprised.

“That is very hard,” she said, “but I am sure they love you too and understand why you have come here.”

And that was how he met Sister Magdalena.

Sister Magdalena was so tiny that the robes of her habit dwarfed her. She loved to talk to people and exuded her love for God from every pore. She started to seek Nicolò out after that first meeting in the convent’s chapel. At first he tried to avoid her, as she had seen right through him in a way he was not accustomed to and certainly could not afford now with all the secrets he kept, but then she took it upon herself to show up looking for him at stranger and stranger times of the day and so he eventually gave in. Along with his maintenance work and his extensive hours in prayer, he began to regularly meet Sister Magdalena every other day in the courtyard.

Sister Magdalena seemed to have taken it upon herself to reteach him every word of the Bible. “I used to be a priest,” he told her one day as he was pulling weeds, and she laughed so hard she nearly fell off the bench she was sitting on.

“And you are also a fool,” she said, “but in time, we may correct both of those previous mistakes,” and quickly took him to task in Genesis.

Nicolò had learned the Bible, memorized the Bible, even occasionally discussed the Bible, but he had never studied it in such depth and dissected it the way he did with Sister Magdalena. He had come to look for a distraction and he had found it in Sister Magdalena, her voracious appetite for the Word of God, and her opinion on every verse. “I do not believe we should be afraid of God,” she proclaimed one day as they were walking aimless circles around the courtyard. (Sister Magdalena had wanted to stretch her legs, and she poked Nicolò in the side and told him to join her because he was putting on weight.)

Nicolò spluttered. “What?” He had been taught to fear the wrath and the judgment of God his whole life, had heard of the horrors that God could unleash when His will was ignored. He had seen God’s destruction firsthand in Antioch. “God does terrible things to those who do not obey His word, Sister.”

“So do most people,” Sister Magdalena said, “but most people do not create beauty like we find in this world, either, or give such rewards and kindness to the people who obey them. Most people do not forgive us our trespasses, time and time again.”

“Some do,” Nicolò countered, partially to be contrary and partially because he was thinking of Yusuf. He was usually thinking of Yusuf, these days, when he was not trying to hide those thoughts with thoughts of God.

“And those who forgive so readily are the closest out of all of us to God,” Sister Magdalena refuted. Nicolò couldn’t argue with that.

Sometimes, when Compline was over and Nicolò had not been able to sleep that night, the two of them would meet in the greyness of dawn and Nicolò would tell her things. Not much, nothing that would truly give him away or expose his blessing of life, but enough that he felt less like he would scream. He had so much trapped inside him, so much pain, so much rage, so much – something. He hadn’t the words for it any longer. He missed Yusuf, at times like these. It was easier to feel when Yusuf was around.

“I wish I hadn’t left, sometimes,” he told Sister Magdalena one of these nights. He ached all over, he hadn’t truly slept in days. He had just recounted, with the omission of some choice details, his parting from Yusuf and Quýnh and Andromache.

“Do you know the story of Ruth and Naomi?” she asked him.

“If I had not before, I suspect that I will hear it again now.”

Sister Magdalena huffed. “Do you know what Ruth said, precisely, to Naomi?” Nicolò did not, and so she rattled it off as quickly as she could. “Ruth said, ‘Be not against me, to desire that I should leave you and depart: for wherever you shall go, I will go, and where you shall dwell, I also will dwell. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’ She vowed, with everything she had, to stay with her friend.”

“That is beautiful,” Nicolò said quietly.

“It was one of the first verses I ever learned. My father was devoted to God, he explained it to me when I must have been only five years old. I think he meant for it to remind me of the holiness of devotion to family, but when I was a child, I so longed for someone to love me that selflessly, that completely, the way that Ruth loved Naomi. I so desperately wanted for someone to promise that they would always follow me, and be there for me, but when I found God and came to the convent, I learned that although I was not loved like Naomi had been, I could instead take the role of Ruth. I chose to take the role of Ruth to God, to make sure to always follow wherever He led, to let nothing but death, if that, come between God and myself.”

Nicolò was crying. He wasn’t sure exactly when he had started to cry. Sister Magdalena produced a handkerchief from somewhere inside her sleeve and handed it to him. “I am telling you this for two reasons,” she said. “First, because there is no shame in not being able to be like Ruth. We see this in the story God has given us, in the way that he has also revered Naomi. Second, because for this beautiful story to work, both Ruth and Naomi had to love each other equally, even if they did not express it in the same way. Do you say what I am saying, Nicolò?”

He did see what she was saying. “It is unfortunate that women are not permitted to be priests. You would be excellent at it, I think.”

“Probably,” Sister Magdalena said. “Definitely better than you were.”

“Why must those who care for me always disparage me,” Nicolò grumbled. He tried to return her handkerchief but she refused him.

“Keep it, my brother. Tears will cleanse your soul, and I think you have needed to cry for a long time.”

As it happened, though, Sister Magdalena left his life not long after that. Nicolò was trying to make one of the fence posts slightly more redeemable when he heard someone shouting his name and saw Sister Magdalena running full tilt towards him. “My brother Nicolò!” she shouted one last time as she slid to a stop, nearly overbalancing and toppling into the dirt. “I have excellent news!”

“Oh, pray tell?”

“I have received a vision!” Nicolò was naturally skeptical of visions, but he was also convinced at this point that if anyone was to receive some sort of vision from God, it would almost certainly be Sister Magdalena. “Last night in my prayers, I came to a pause, and in my mind I felt His presence, Nicolò, a peace I have never known. I realized my work here in Rome was done, and God has shown me that it is time to go somewhere in greater need. After consulting with the Mother Abbess this morning, I have been approved to move to the convent in the village of Fanano!”

“That is excellent news, but I must admit I will miss you terribly,” Nicolò said.

“And I you, my dearest brother. One of God’s motives in keeping me here for so long was to speak with you, I know that. But I feel blessed to know that I have done good here, with you, and I am fortunate in that God has now shown me the way forward.”

“When do you leave?”

“As soon as we receive conformation from our counterparts, so in no more than a fortnight.”

“I wish that I could have for myself some of your certainty in God’s path,” Nicolò said.

“Perhaps you do not see it, but you heal people so well, Nicolò. We have delighted in your presence, your constant work to fix things. You have helped me reach where I am now in my faith. You even help to heal plants.”

“I am no doctor, nor am I a very good priest,” Nicolò said. “And I am quite sure the plants may be just luck.”

Sister Magdalena waved him off. “Maybe not, but I think you heal people by providing something that was missing before. That is what you have done for us, for me.” She hummed. “I know my talks with you helped to bring about this vision, for which I can never thank you enough. You are a healer and a gentle soul, and I wish that you could see that. God can see that in you. I know, and you know, that your time here has concluded. There are other people in the world that need you more than I do, now.”

They both left the compound on the same day. She slipped him a piece of paper with the Fanano convent’s address. “You must write to me, my dear brother, and tell me of your adventures. Will you have an address for me?”

As a matter of fact, Nicolò did have an address. Andromache, upon learning of his origins, had told him about a safehouse she maintained in Florence. He had never been to the city himself, but he knew Andromache loved it and often stopped by in her travels. “My aunt lives in Florence,” he said, hoping against hope that Andromache would never know he’d referred to her as such. “Even if I am traveling, your letters will find a home there.”

Sister Magdalena fixed him with a look. They had been friends for only a year, but Nicoló had told her things, things that weighed on him, things that corroded inside of him, and for one moment, the look in her eyes made him fear that he had told her too much. But all she said was, “have you heard the story of David and Jonathan, Nicolò?”

“Not your telling of it.”

Sister Magdalena sighed. “It is not my telling of it, Nicolò, it is just the words that are written for us. The Bible tells us that when all had come about, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. When Jonathan fell, we are told that David rent his garments in mourning.” She sighed again. “David said of Jonathan, ‘I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan, exceeding beautiful, and lovely to me above the love of women.’”

Nicolò could not breathe. Sister Magdalena reached out and grabbed his face in her hands. She had to stretch up onto her tiptoes to do it. Her eyes, when they connected with his, were very, very dark, and if he had not known better, he may have thought she was on the verge of tears. “I do not make the decisions, and you do not make the decisions, and nobody makes the decisions about what is correct and just, or what our path will truly be, besides the Lord himself. Maybe others will, but as a vessel of God and a lover of His words, I do not get to pass judgment on you. God gives us all of these stories so that we may know the beauty of love, Nicolò. Love should give you nothing but joy.”

“I do not think it’s that easy,” Nicolò said.

“It can be,” Sister Magdalena said. “It can be, but you will need to go back to your friends.” She was full of opinions, but Nicolò knew she could never say out loud what he saw in her eyes. She was still a woman of God, after all.

The monks called for her to join them – she would be using a horse, which was a luxury, to be sure, but one afforded to those who had visions of their next assignment. Nicolò swallowed, and said, because he could not say any of the things he was thinking, “Goodbye, Sister Magdalena.”

“Goodbye, my dearest brother,” she said, finally releasing his face from between her hands, and running to join the monks.

He never saw her again. Sister Magdalena lived longer than most, until she was 43. She worked as a midwife with the village women and led many spirited discussions within her new convent. She wrote to him exactly once a month, and when the letters stopped, he knew that she was no more.

But in that moment, three years and three days after he had left his friends behind, he followed Sister Magdalena's caravan onto the road, with his few possessions slung over his shoulder, and as she and the monks turned to follow the road away from Rome, he turned to return to the heart of the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello my friends  
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.
> 
> about the things contained above: i am not catholic. HOWEVER in judaism, we also have these verses and they featured heavily in my journey of accepting myself and my own sexuality. additionally, upon consulting with some of my resident catholics (who have been absolutely instrumental in writing this, by the way), they also cited the above two stories of Ruth and Naomi and Jonathan and David in helping them grapple with the intersection of their faith and sexuality. it is not my intention at all to imply that these interpretations or experiences with these portions of the text are universal, but i feel when looking at the translations that Nicolò would have most likely had access to that these two stories would have also potentially have featured heavily in his coming to terms with not necessarily desiring another man, but loving him, because one of these things was significantly more taboo than the other in this time. in terms of the translation, i found an online translation of the vulgate bible but it showed up in medieval english and i certainly cannot translate things directly from latin so i just took the english version and removed the 'thee's and 'thou's. also, why is it significant that David tore his clothing on hearing of Jonathan's death, you may ask? why, my friend, David was Jewish, and in more conservative older traditions, it's common to only tear our clothes in mourning for our family or our romantic partners.
> 
> i have talked a lot this time around yikes  
> we're getting back to our regularly scheduled programming on sunday


	7. the chosen, the beautiful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the _oh_ moment is in this chapter, enjoy

Nicolò had promised his friends that he would go to Rome, but after initially passing through three years ago on his way to the monastery, he had not set foot in the city again until now. After all the time he and Yusuf had spent in the East, he had become more accustomed to the way of life there. He found himself turning his nose up at just how dirty everything was, how dull the colors. There were certainly no libraries here. Nicolò did not want to be a snob or to seem ungrateful for his good fortune and ability to travel, but he finally fully understood, now, why people had called him and his companions ‘unwashed’ so many years ago and meant it as one of the highest insults.

He found a tiny, secluded room to rent. He had very little with him, so he used the money he had tucked away in his bag to buy the household wares he needed, drawing entirely off of his memory of Yusuf’s attention to furnishings when they had been in Baghdad. Many of the things he remembered that Yusuf had come back with, things such as rugs and blankets and curtains and washbasins, the fine things that he had become accustomed to in their time together, were luxuries here. Nicolò did barter for some finer fabric he hung up as a curtain, but his room (for it was not a home, and would not be, could not be without Yusuf), still looked so dingy and depressing that he did his best to spend as little time in it as possible. He could see the Coliseum from his window, which he had thought would be painful but instead came as a small comfort to him. He was ashamed to go back to his friends – he had done so wrong by them. He needed more time to collect himself. The Coliseum served as a reminder of them, but it was enough removed, with few enough memories attached, that it was not as painful as he had anticipated.

The words Sister Magdalena had said to him upon their parting rang in his ears every day. He could not spend time untangling his traitorous heart, not while he was still rediscovering and reinterpreting the purpose given to him by God. Nicolò knew now that he had only two constants in his life, God and Yusuf, and he had done poorly by both of them. God would be easier to repent to and correct for, and so he chose to devote his time to that first. (Nicolò had always known himself to be a coward.) The piece that had been missing in his life until now was that not only could he protect people, but also heal them if he could not keep them from being injured in the first place. He did not have to stagnate and box himself into the trap of always killing and always defending, he could use his gifts for more than that. He had the time, now, to master new things and learn new skills. God had given him all the time in the world.

And so that was how Nicolò found himself apprenticed to a physician. It was interesting work, and he knew that it was the right work for him in this moment – he had not even completed his first day of training when he felt peace like he had not in so many years, not since his time in Baghdad. He learned how to make people comfortable if he could not save them, and he realized that his very presence was sometimes enough for people to relax. This was a way he could use both his hands and his relationship with God for good. He knew that his education in medicine may not be the most advanced or contain the most current theories, but he had promised to stay in Rome, and so in Rome he would remain. He hoped that it was a comfort to his friends the way it sometimes comforted him, the knowledge that he was in Rome, and that they could find him there if they needed to.

He was walking home from a patient’s home one day when he had an awful feeling. It wasn’t dread, not quite, but he cast about thinking for what it might be, looking up at the Coliseum where it loomed over his path home, and – _no, no. No, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be today._

It was four years to the day, four years since he had walked away from his friends in the desert, and the sun was just starting to set.

The first thing he felt was fear because he wasn’t ready, not yet, he couldn’t face them, he hadn’t prepared for this, but his body had other ideas and he was running full tilt back the way he had come, trying not to drop his bag and dodging the pedestrians in his path, and then he saw him. Yusuf. Sitting on a bench, as calm as could be, the orange from the sunset in his hair and – he looked beautiful like that, glowing in the light. And in that moment, the last piece fell into place, and Nicolò’s feet were suddenly rooted to the ground, and the only thing he could think was just, _Oh._ Oh, because what a fool, what an absolute fool, he had been.

Nicolò could not move, so it was just good fortune that Yusuf turned to see him, and then all they could do was stare at each other. There must have been pedestrians passing between them but Nicolò didn’t notice, he was so focused on taking Yusuf in. His hair was shorter now. He held himself more stiffly than Nicolò remembered, but maybe that was because he was sitting on the side of a busy street and not around a fire with his friends. He was not wearing the bright colors he favored, and he didn’t smile when he saw Nicolò, not really, but his eyes lit up, and that almost made up for it. Yusuf shifted on the bench, conspicuously making space for someone to join him, and Nicolò recognized it for the invitation that it was. They hadn’t been more than twenty paces apart when Nicolò had been struck dumb by the sight of him, but it was the greatest twenty paces Nicolò had ever crossed, and then Nicolò was sitting next to him, both of them rigid, both staring at the street.

He had to say something. Nicolò had to say something. He was the one who had wanted this, he was the one who had left, he was the one who had done this to their relationship, and there wasn’t anything adequate to say. No apology could ring true. Nothing could explain what he had felt, how afraid he had been, how confused he had been, how afraid he still was. His fear didn’t matter, though, not in that moment, because what mattered was addressing Yusuf’s hurt, because he had every right to be hurt and angry and upset, and Nicolò didn’t know how to do that either.

“I love you,” he said, instead. He had never said that out loud to anyone before, and his words were nearly swallowed in the noise of the street.

“What am I supposed to do with that?” Yusuf asked, and Nicolò fell forward with his head in his hands just as if he had been punched because his voice, _this man’s voice, how had he forgotten his voice?_

“I don’t know,” Nicolò said, “but love should bring you nothing but joy.”

“Now I know you must have met some interesting people in our time apart, those words are entirely too wise to be yours alone,” and Nicolò managed to turn and look at his friend just as Yusuf turned to him, and later he could hardly remember precisely how it happened but they had both moved and were both laughing and crying and clasping hands in front of the Coliseum, Nicolò holding so tightly to Yusuf’s hands that his knuckles were striped white.

“I have missed you so dearly, my friend.”

“I did not always miss you, but when I did, it consumed me,” Nicolò said.

Yusuf looked shocked. “Maybe I was wrong, and you simply have become a poet in our time apart.” Nicolò was laughing again, harder than before, and Yusuf looked a little bit concerned but started laughing with him, and that was it, Nicolò was never leaving this man again, it would take an army and a half to ever pry him from Yusuf’s side.

“Come,” Yusuf said, “let’s go home,” and Nicolò, who had no words left, just nodded and followed him back to a tiny room much like his own, on the top floor of a tenement. Yusuf opened the door and Nicolò had only just gotten one foot over the threshold when there was a loud shriek and he barely managed to avoid toppling over from the sheer force with which Quýnh slammed into him.

“Quýnh,” Andromache scolded, then – “Nicolò?”

“You must never leave us again,” Quýnh insisted as Andromache tried to pry her arms from around Nicolò’s neck, “never again, do you hear me? You must never leave,” and Andromache finally wormed her way between them and hugged him just as tightly.

“Oh, my darling,” she said in his ear, privately, just for him to hear, smoothing a hand over his hair, “we have missed you so much.” She pulled back a little bit, and then said loudly, “Really, four full years, Nicolò? Four years we have waited for you.”

“What are you doing here? I expected only to see Yusuf.”

“We came with him every year, you fool,” Quýnh said. She was still hovering near his elbow although Andromache was now trying to shoo her back into the tiny kitchen area, where the table was piled high with food. “We wouldn’t let Yusuf come alone, we wanted to see you too.”

Nicolò looked to Yusuf, out of habit, and his friend’s eyes were – gone was the laughter and the light that Nicolò once remembered seeing there; something had slammed shut inside of his soul.

“That is very kind of you,” Nicolò said quietly. Quýnh, finally giving into Andromache’s persistent herding, grabbed his hand and towed him along with her, pushing him into the chair next to her.

“Will you stay with us from now on?” Quýnh asked. Andromache snorted.

“I have been working with a physician,” Nicolò said, deflecting from the question that he could not answer, not yet, and Quýnh’s eyes lit up.

“Oh, that sounds amazing, have you been learning much?”

“He has taught me how to keep patients comfortable, but I must say that the medical knowledge in this part of the world is lacking.”

“al-Andalus has been thriving,” Andromache said, her mouth full. “Córdoba in particular. Maybe you can finish your studies there if you find the ones here lacking.”

“Maybe I will,” Nicolò said, and then the conversation returned to Quýnh asking him every question that popped into her head, Andromache adding questions of her own from time to time. Yusuf was silent all the while, and that was unnerving for Nicolò. He had never seen Yusuf this quiet for this long. Even when they had first met, Yusuf had had no problem cursing at him or shouting at him or trying to tell him things, even though there had been no way for Nicolò to understand him. But now he was silent, and judging from the behavior of their friends, it seemed that this unnerving silence had become more common.

“Where will you be going next?” Nicolò asked after they finished eating, and there was a loud clatter as Yusuf dropped his cup back on the table.

“I’m going out for a moment,” he said, and he was up and out the door before any of them could so much as blink.

“You’ve got to fix that,” Andromache said to Nicolò once the door had closed.

“I don’t know what you did,” Quýnh added, “but it must have been something truly terrible. I don’t think we’ve ever been at such odds with each other, have we, Andromache?” Andromache quirked her lips up into a half-smile, the soft one that Nicolò only ever had seen her give to Quýnh, and reached out to lightly brush her fingers over the back of Quýnh’s hand.

“No, I don’t think so. At least not since you first killed me.”

“Is this because I left?” Nicolò asked, the question finally bursting out of him.

Quýnh hummed. “Not exactly? He struggled at first with that, as you’d imagine, but we have had some marvelous adventures together. This day every year was difficult for him, but we knew from the start that we needed to come with him, and I think that has helped him to cope.”

“He hasn’t been like this before, if that’s your question,” Andromache said bluntly. “So that means you need to fix it.”

“Did you say something to him?” Quýnh asked. “Or do something, when you reunited? We knew the day you’d come back to us would be both a difficult and special thing, but we didn’t expect him to react quite like this.”

“I may have said something,” Nicolò said, feeling cold tendrils of dread begin unfurling in his stomach. “I didn’t mean to, it just…when I saw him, I couldn’t think.”

“Oh dear,” Andromache said, in a tone verging on disinterested.

“What did you tell him, Nicolò?” Quýnh asked. She reached out and squeezed his hand. Nicolò was grateful that she was immortal and relatively indestructible, because otherwise he would have worried about hurting her hand with the strength of his grip.

“I told him that I loved him,” Nicolò said, mostly addressing the table.

There was an agonizing silence. Quýnh squeezed his hand even tighter.

“Wow,” Andromache said finally, and she sounded like she was trying not to laugh.

“Of all the things,” Quýnh said, and she sounded like she was trying not to cry, “why did you tell him that?”

“Do you think it was a mistake?” Nicolò said, trying not to let too much of the panic he was feeling creep into his voice.

“It’s probably the worst possible thing you could have said,” Andromache said conversationally. Quýnh squeezed his hand again.

“Look at me, Nicolò?” He dared to look up at her, carefully, and saw nothing but kindness in her eyes. (That pure kindness was a rare look on Quýnh. He assumed she was being gentle due to his recent return.) “If it is how you feel, I don’t think it was a mistake.”

“I don’t know how I feel,” Nicolò said, and gave into the impulse to drop his forehead down onto the table.

“What’s wrong with him?” Yusuf’s voice asked from behind them. Nicolò startled and ended up slamming his face down into the table, hard.

“Oh dear,” Andromache said. She was laughing now. Nicolò groaned. Someone patted his head – he guessed it was Andromache, because it was too rough for it to fit with how gently Quýnh had been treating him.

“He’s just been telling us of his time away,” Quýnh said.

“I’ve just been telling them of my time away,” Nicolò quickly agreed.

“Then why are you still face down on the table, my friend?” Nicolò carefully picked his head up. Yusuf still did not look truly happy, but there was a small smile playing at the corners of his lips.

“It was an embarrassing story,” Nicolò said finally. “Andromache was mocking me.”

“I was doing no such thing,” Andromache said, “I was merely offering some advice on how he could have done things differently in such a situation, if he were to find himself in it again.”

“Sit up properly and tell us more of your time away,” Yusuf said, and he brushed his hand across the back of Nicolò’s neck as he rejoined them. “He is speaking like a poet now, Quýnh, there must be an explanation for this.”

They sat and talked late into the night. Nicolò told them of his apprenticeship with the physician in Rome, before that, his time at the monastery, and his friendship with Sister Magdalena. In response, Quýnh told him of their time traveling, how they had gone to Constantinople and down to Cairo, then returned to remain in France and Lombardy. Andromache interjected from time to time with an anecdote or interrupted a story that she felt Quýnh would not tell properly. Yusuf simply listened. His eyes rarely strayed from Nicolò’s face.

Finally, Andromache had drunk enough ale, and it seemed that Quýnh was tired enough, that the conversation wrapped up naturally and the two of them went to prepare for bed. Yusuf left again and came back with a bowl of water, then performed his ablutions and prayed. The fact that he had retained this custom made something deep inside Nicolò ache, the combination of the familiar and the unknown he now saw in his friend was something he could not handle.

Nicolò was at a loss for how to integrate himself into their routine, and instead hovered by the door. He did not know if he was expected, or even allowed, to stay the night with his friends. He blew out the last two candles once Yusuf had settled down a short distance away from where Andromache and Quýnh were piled together, and then he still hovered.

“Oh for the love of everything holy, come here,” Andromache finally huffed in the darkness, “but leave your filthy shoes and your bag by the door.”

Nicolò did as she asked. The only spot left for him was in between Yusuf and the two women, but as soon as he laid down, Quýnh rolled over and latched onto him, much as she had when he first walked through the door. “I am so glad you’re back,” she said faintly, into his neck.

“I am too,” he said quietly. He heard Andromache grumble something, then felt her arm land heavily over the two of them, fingers resting on his ribcage.

“You’re an idiot,” she said, raising her head a little bit so she could glare at him.

“Leave him alone,” Quýnh mumbled, doing something that made Andromache yelp. “He came back, didn’t he?”

“Yusuf, get over here, you smell better than he does,” Andromache said loudly, and Nicolò could barely breathe, barely move, as his friend heaved a sigh and then rolled over, carefully molding himself to the length of Nicolò’s back and reaching across him to catch Andromache’s hand in his own, their joined hands settling on Nicolò’s stomach.

“Is this satisfactory for you, Andromache?” Yusuf mumbled, and the rumble of his voice combined with the way he pressed even closer sent chills racing down Nicolò’s spine.

“It’ll do for now,” she said, and then she yelped again as Quýnh elbowed her (Nicolò got a glimpse this time).

“People are trying to sleep,” Quýnh mumbled, and that was the last thing Nicolò heard before he fell asleep, warmer than he had felt in years surrounded by his friends.

He awoke early, as he had never shaken the custom from his last few years in the monastery. Yusuf was already awake, evidently trying to be quiet as he dug through one of their bags. Andromache and Quýnh were still sound asleep. Quýnh had somehow managed to drape herself even further on top of him during the night, and Nicolò was very careful not to jostle her too much as he extricated himself. Yusuf looked up as he got to his feet.

“Are you leaving us already?” he asked lowly. Nicolò flinched.

“I suppose I deserve that,” he said finally. Yusuf shrugged. “No, my plan was to go to tell the physician that I work with that I will be leaving, and then return to my room to pack my things.”

Yusuf just looked at him - nothing more, nothing less, just looking him up and down. His expression was still too shuttered for Nicolò to tell what he was thinking, and that bothered Nicolò more than he cared to admit. Nicolò missed his expressions, hated the realization that this control wasn’t something that Yusuf could have developed today – he must have been tamping himself down over the four years they had been separated.

“And why are you packing your things, Nicolò?” Yusuf asked carefully.

Nicolò sighed. He could not dance around him anymore. He could not dance around this. “Will you come with me to al-Andalus, Yusuf? I have recently heard that Córdoba is a good place to study medicine.”

Yusuf looked at him for a second more, and then his face burst into a wide, absolutely stunning grin. He had not smiled at Nicolò yesterday, not like this. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I will come with you to Córdoba.”

“Good,” Nicolò said, because he could not think of anything else, but he was helpless not to respond to that type of joy, especially from Yusuf. “Wait here. I’ll be back soon with my things and then we’ll go.”

“All right,” Yusuf said, and the last thing Nicolò saw on his way out the door and down the stairs was Yusuf, carefully watching him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my dear friends, as always, i delight in your company and unending kindness.
> 
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.


	8. kyrie, eléison

Nicolò packed only the most necessary of his things as quickly as he could. He abandoned most of the belongings in his house and gave his landlady some extra coin for her troubles, told her that she could take whatever she wished from his rooms. He had not accumulated much but he also had not traveled in some time now, and as a result there were some small things he had acquired over the four years of separation that he no longer had a use for. He ran to tell the physician he had worked with that he had been called away on urgent family matters, and then, as the sun was finally reaching its peak in the sky, returned to the small room where he had left his friends. Their discussion sharply cut off as he burst through the doorway, and Nicolò realized that he had entered in on a conversation not meant for him to hear. Quýnh was hovering again, staring at Yusuf with an uncharacteristically ferocious glare. Yusuf looked him up and down. Andromache was not fazed.

“We’re going to stay here for a bit,” she said, clapping a hand down on Quýnh’s shoulder hard to indicate who she was referring to. “We’ll come meet you later, maybe next year. Wait for us there.” It was not a request.

Quýnh was obviously unhappy that they were to go their separate ways so soon after being reunited, but Andromache glared and tugged her aside for a whispered conversation in an old language Nicolò still had not learned. Quýnh was stubborn, but she and Andromache had presented a united front for as long as Nicolò had known them, and this would be no exception. Yusuf kept glancing over at Nicolò, his dark eyes impenetrable. Nicolò eventually felt the corner of his mouth twitch in half a smile, and Yusuf’s eyes lit up again.

“You must be careful,” Quýnh said finally, pushing Andromache away and coming to hold Yusuf’s face in her hands, “promise me you will be careful. Córdoba is safe for you two, it is a good place, but I hate to – you must be careful.” She tugged Yusuf in for a hug that looked almost painful, started whispering frantically to him. Andromache unbuckled the bracers on her arms and handed them to Nicolò.

“Go trade these for a horse,” she said.

“Andromache, I can’t - ”

“Yes, you can,” Andromache said tersely, cutting him off before he could protest and pushing them further into his hands. “Take them, Nico.” Nicolò had to close his eyes at that. “You do not have the money for a horse,” she insisted. _I do not have the money to give you_ , she did not say.

“All right,” Nicolò said finally, and their hands lingered together, just for a moment, underneath the leather of her bracers before she stepped back to let Quýnh hug him goodbye.

“Be careful,” Quýnh whispered for his ears alone, “be careful with your heart, too,” and before Nicolò could ask what she meant she had stepped back to join Andromache.

“Come, Nicolò, we must go trade those and get horses before the day is out,” Yusuf said, and they both shouldered their bags and left. Nicolò kept glancing back over his shoulder until they had left the building entirely, and even then, he watched the structure disappear behind them as they walked away, although he had of course long since lost sight of their companions. He could not help but think of the two women with an ache in his chest. Nicolò hadn’t been so worn down by his separation from them as his separation from Yusuf, but he knew it caused Quýnh a great deal of pain every time they walked away, and Andromache…Andromache’s love for them burned bright, and fierce, and silent.

They sold Andromache’s bracers quickly. Yusuf grumbled under his breath about how Nicolò was getting cheated before he shouldered in and took over, and Nicolò grumbled back about how Yusuf wouldn’t let him do these things for himself, and it felt almost like they had returned to normalcy. They were back on the road before twilight fell.

It wasn’t quiet as they traveled, necessarily. It wasn’t too quiet, no, but the air between them was icy. There was a barrier between them that Nicolò did not know how to cross. Yusuf had put his walls up, and Nicolò, although it hurt him to see such a thing, did not blame him. He just did not know how to take them down again so that their companionship could blossom into the intimacy it had once been. Before it had been familiarity, then honesty, and the familiarity was still there but the honesty was no longer entirely welcome. Nicolò could not blame Yusuf for that, either. They still talked, albeit at first in a stilted and tense manner, then relaxing more as they spent time together again. Nicolò could always speak to Yusuf. He had never been a man of many words, but he did talk to Yusuf more than he did others, as it had always come easier to him. And although Nicolò was still himself, still reserved, Yusuf knew how to read his silences and his mannerisms in a way that no one else did. They had specific customs and patterns that they had developed after traveling together for so many years, and to slip back into their old habits was as easy for Nicolò as slipping into his native language. There were changes, though. Nicolò realized that his time spent away had made him more talkative, and conversely Yusuf had become more guarded, so their conversations took a different form than they had before. Even their chosen languages were different – they wove their two first languages together, accentuating points with the other’s native language and using their own when they were tired or frustrated.

Nicolò still did not know what it truly meant to love Yusuf, still did not know how this love would change his relationship with God and more importantly with Yusuf, but now that Nicolò knew he loved him, it was all he could feel when he looked at him, all he could think, sometimes, and sometimes there was such warmth in his chest that all he wanted to do was blurt out that he loved Yusuf again and again, show Yusuf that most vulnerable and intimate part of his soul. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when he kept watch and Yusuf was asleep, the shadows of the firelight reflecting off his ( _lovely, lovely_ ) face, Nicolò was gripped by a fear that he kept shoved down inside his heart and tucked away within himself, the fear that perhaps his feelings were not requited. In the daylight, when they were awake, and Yusuf smiled so brilliantly at him, he did not dwell on such things, for how could he? Nicolò had made his choice. He would stay by Yusuf’s side for as long as he would have him, and in whatever form that took.

They made good time and reached Córdoba before the seasons changed. As soon as they crossed into al-Andalus the change in Yusuf was evident. He was far more relaxed, more cheerful with the strangers they met in their travels, and less frosty with Nicolò. Yusuf, in a testament to his patience, and his goodwill, and everything he was, began to tutor Nicolò in the language spoken in al-Andalus, just as he had taught him other languages all those many years ago. Yusuf was admittedly gentler now and did not shout curses at Nicolò as he once had, but still, still they had such a barrier between them, even with such a parody of their past companionship. Nicolò desperately wanted to tell Yusuf every day that he was sorry, that he loved him, that he loved him more desperately than he could ever say, that finally things had come together for him, that he was sorry for waiting this long, sorry that he had been confused by the Almighty and blinded by misguided notions of his faith and misguided notions of what types of love were holy, but still he could not. He knew that those words were still not welcome. Instead, he tried to show Yusuf the depth of his care with everything he did. He woke before Yusuf did so that he could bring in water for Yusuf’s ablutions and have some sort of food on the table for after Yusuf finished his prayers, and also so that Nicolò could tidy the house before he left for his new apprenticeship. He took a careful inventory of what they needed in the house each day and went to the market immediately after he finished his hours with the physician so that Yusuf would not have to go, for Yusuf was equally busy with his work. (Although Nicolò was the one who copied texts for pleasure, Yusuf had always had far better penmanship than him, and he had taken employment as a scribe and a translator.) For all his complaining about how Nicolò was always cheated and always spent too much on their food, Nicolò also knew that Yusuf had never truly liked doing the shopping. Nicolò’s Arabic was good enough and he fit in well enough in al-Andalus that he was no longer cheated so often anyway. He tried his best to keep on top of the household chores, although sometimes, with the long hours he kept at the physician’s side, he was so desperately tired in the evenings that he could scarcely keep his eyes open until he finally collapsed on his bedroll, asleep before he had truly lain down. (He was so tired now that sometimes it seems a miracle that he awakened the next morning. He did not know if anything would disturb him on those nights, not even if the door were kicked in.)

He kept up this hectic pace for as long as he could, until one evening when he sat down just for a moment, just until his legs stopped feeling so numb, and fell asleep with his head on the kitchen table. He awoke to a hand carding through his hair, calluses snagging and pulling ever so gently. He sat bolt upright, nearly crashing into Yusuf, who quickly sidestepped him. “How long – what time is it?”

“It’s late, Nicolò. Have you eaten?”

“No, I – I only meant to sleep for a minute.” He tried to push himself up to stand but he had woken too recently and the blood drained from his head too rapidly so he fell back down, hard, into his chair.

“Are you well, my friend?” Yusuf was truly concerned. “You seem so tired.”

“It is just my long hours at work,” Nicolò said, waving him off, but as he turned to properly look at Yusuf, he knew immediately that this paltry explanation would not suffice. Yusuf must have lit candles when he arrived home, and the flickering light cast from them showed that his lips were pressed tightly together in a way that Nicolò had not seen in many years; it signaled that he was close to tears. “Are you well, Yusuf?”

“As well as I can be,” Yusuf said, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, too late for him to fully stifle a sob. Nicolò bolted upright with more success this time, knocking the chair over entirely with a clatter.

“What is it? Please, you must tell me.”

It was Yusuf’s turn to wave him off. “It is nothing,” he said, “nothing, I beg you, let us not speak of this.”

“Speak of what?”

Yusuf still had a hand covering his mouth, but it did nothing to hide the fact that he was openly weeping now, tears streaking down his cheeks and glittering in the candlelight. “Yusuf,” Nicolò said again, helplessly, and took a step closer to him, and then another, and then slowly, signaling his movements enough that Yusuf could push him away if he so desired, pulled Yusuf into his arms.

He did not remember the last time he had held Yusuf in his arms, or truly if he ever had with such tenderness. All he could think of was the increasingly desperate times they had killed each other when they initially met, wrapping their hands around each other’s necks and holding each other with arms tightly slung around waists to better slit each other’s throats, a violent mockery of their embrace now. Yusuf was shaking from the force of his tears but he was also all but silent, too silent. Nicolò held him as tightly and as gently as he dared. “You do not need to hide your tears from me,” he said quietly into Yusuf’s shoulder. “You have not done so in a long time.” They were all but a matched height, which Nicolò did not think he had noticed before, or he had perhaps noticed and then forgotten. It scared Nicolò to think too deeply on the things that he had forgotten about Yusuf.

Yusuf took a deep, shuddering breath, and his arms slowly came up to hug Nicolò back, almost too tightly.

They stood in the middle of the room, locked in an embrace that was too tight and too intimate and too revealing for Nicolò’s taste, as the candles sputtered and burned low and, one by one, extinguished, leaving the room in almost complete darkness.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò finally said, his heart heavier than he could recollect in his life, “Yusuf.”

“Please, Nicolò, I cannot hear you say it again. Not now, not right now.”

“Yusuf, I cannot keep this inside me. I cannot – I am so sorry. For how I have hurt you, for all the times I have hurt you in our years together. I must beg for your forgiveness again, I have – I had lost my way, and finally God has shown me this new path, but I am sorry that I did not realize sooner, and that I have hurt you so much in the process.”

“Where does your new path take you?” They were so, so close. Nicolò leant forward, just slightly, and felt their foreheads touch.

“Here,” Nicolò said. It had to be said. “With you. This is where I am meant to be.”

“Nico,” Yusuf said, his voice cracking the way it had the last time Nicolò had stabbed him, so many years ago now. Nicolò’s memories were filled with the times he had hurt Yusuf and he wanted nothing more than to replace every painful moment, every bit of anger and strife, with something beautiful, something that showed Yusuf just how much Nicolò loved him.

“May I kiss you?” Nicolò asked, so quietly that it was nothing but a breath between their lips, and Yusuf whispered back his assent, just as softly. Nicolò’s hands were shaking, but he leant in to close the last breath of space between their lips. He wished it to be slow and sweet, and maybe a way to pour every bit of love, everything he felt, everything he could not say or that Yusuf could not hear yet, but instead his mind was finally, blissfully blank.

And Yusuf kissed him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friends, we have been parted for too long - thank you, as always, for your patience and your kindness.


	9. a conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok lads it's gonna be short and sweet this has tormented me for weeks so here we goooo

Nicolò had long since lost track of time, and as such he lost track of how long they stood there, alternating between kissing and simply sharing the air they breathed, until Yusuf pulled away for what seemed to be a jaw cracking yawn. Nicolò started to laugh.

“Have I bored you, Yusuf?” He had wound his arms around Yusuf’s neck at some point, he did not know when, but now he found himself absently tugging on a ringlet at the nape of Yusuf’s neck.

“We must have a conversation,” Yusuf said finally. “A proper conversation about this, about where we will go from here.”

“In the morning,” Nicolò said.

“Then come to bed,” Yusuf said. Nicolò must have tensed up, because Yusuf’s hands ran up and down his spine in a quick caress, meant to soothe him. “I expect nothing, Nicolò, nothing you will not give. I would just have you in my arms.”

“I can give you that, every night as long as you will have me. But we have no bed for the two of us.”

“We’ll get a bed,” Yusuf said, a hint of familiar fond exasperation creeping into his voice. “Tomorrow, we will talk and then find a bed. But tonight, we will make do.”

Nicolò ended up dragging his bedroll over and laying it out alongside Yusuf’s, as they quickly realized that just one was far too small for two grown men, and that they also could not easily fit under the cloaks and blankets they had gathered, each best suited to a single person rather than two. But once they had arranged themselves satisfactorily, Yusuf slung an arm over Nicolò and pulled him back against his body, molding himself to the shape of Nicolò’s spine, the curve of his legs.

“Is this comfortable? Will you sleep like this?”

“Yes,” Nicolò whispered into the dark of the room. Yusuf placed a kiss to the back of his neck, wrapped his hand around his wrist and began slowly, mindlessly tracing patterns across the inside of his wrist with his thumb. Nicolò's sword was close enough within reach that he could finally relax, bit by bit, and he fell asleep to the gentle motions of Yusuf’s thumb and the steady rhythm of his breathing, the two of them pressed so closely together that Nicolò felt that they could have almost become one.

…

Nicolò slept so soundly that he did not stir even when Yusuf moved away for fajr, and instead woke to the sun coming in through the windows of their home. _Their home._ Nicolò had not realized until the present moment, but he rarely even thought of things as _his_ any longer. Instead he and Yusuf shared everything – the material possessions that he had were in fact best described as _theirs_. All that Nicolò had for his own were his weapons, his memories, his faith. He did not need so many concrete things.

“Did you sleep well?” Yusuf asked as Nicolò pushed himself up to sitting. “I was almost concerned, I have never seen you sleep so soundly.”

“I do not remember the last time I did so,” Nicolò said, scrubbing at his eyes. Yusuf kicked out the other chair from the table so Nicolò could stumble over and take a seat in it, still barely awake. He mumbled his thanks.

“Nicolò, there are some things I would say to you.” Yusuf’s tone was kind, so painfully kind, and Nicolò felt a horrible itching heat spread up his ears and down his throat, and he was suddenly so nervous about what Yusuf might say that it took every bit of his willpower to stay seated in the chair. But it was only fair, it was only just to hear Yusuf out.

“All right,” he said, and some of his fears must have showed plainly on his face, for Yusuf reached over and tightly gripped his hand.

“I am not rejecting you, Nicolò. There are just some things that we must clarify if this is to succeed between us. Whatever we decide to make of us.”

“Oh,” Nicolò said intelligently, and dropped his focus to the table.

“If you are able, please look at me for this,” Yusuf said, gently tugging his chin back up with his other hand. “So I know that you are understanding me well.”

Nicolò had been powerless to refuse a direct request from Yusuf almost since they had met, so he eventually held his gaze, and nodded, just slightly, to show that his mind was present. He knew that he was rapidly drumming the fingers of his free hand on the table and wished he could stop, but Yusuf knew him well enough to know that Nicolò had to do such a thing to truly pay attention and so he paid it no mind, and Nicolò was floored once again by how much he loved this man, how he loved this man, how he loved this man more than he could express, how he loved him more than he had words for, more than any language he knew had words for.

“I do not have demands, as it were,” Yusuf said finally, squeezing Nicolò’s hand twice before beginning, “but there are things that you have done and things that I have done that…we cannot continue, and we cannot do them again. If we are to continue on this path we have set out for ourselves.”

“Such as killing each other,” Nicolò said wryly, and Yusuf huffed half of a laugh.

“Such as killing each other, yes.” He inhaled deeply, and Nicolò realized abruptly that Yusuf was – nervous? It was not an emotion he was accustomed to seeing on his friend, not in all the years they had lived by each other’s sides. “Nicolò, you cannot run off like that again. I – we have changed. I know that it needed to happen, and I do not begrudge you, nor will I ever begrudge you, for spending time with God in solitude and reflection. Our life is a gift but we also both know that it takes its toll, which in turn is perhaps why we have found each other. But you must tell me why you are leaving if you need to do that again. Please, you cannot leave without telling me why you are leaving, where you are going, what I can do to support you. I cannot – I cannot bear it.”

“I did tell you those things,” Nicolò halfheartedly protested, but it died on his lips at the look Yusuf sent him.

“You did not truly tell me why you had left. You know this. I know this. We are partners, yes?” Nicolò nodded in assent. “Then that leads to the first thing I ask of you – to be as honest with me as you can. If you cannot tell me something, tell me that you are unable to speak your mind. If you need to have some space, tell me plainly that you wish to spend time away from me. If you wish to spend time in reflection and prayer someplace aligned with your faith, where I cannot enter, tell me this. I never presume to tell you what you can or cannot do, but I can promise that I will never leave you for any reason without telling you why, and all I can do is ask that you do the same for me in return. Is that acceptable to you?” Nicolò nodded again.

“You will not like the second thing I am about to say,” Yusuf said, and quickly squeezed Nicolò’s hand, because Nicolò suddenly felt as if he had been punched in the stomach and his mind was racing with thoughts of all the things Yusuf could say, all of the shortcomings of Nicolò’s, all of the things that he could bring up, all of the things that Nicolò had done wrong, all of the unsavory elements of his character, his rage, his grief, his guilt, his…“Nicolò. This is not a rejection, yes?” Nicolò had forgotten how to do anything except for nod. “I have just told you that I will be honest with you, so will you believe that the words I am about to tell you are ones that come truly from my heart?”

“Yes,” Nicolò said. He had no idea what language he was even speaking in.

“The second thing I would say to you,” Yusuf said carefully, “is this. I am choosing to be with you, and it is a choice I make gladly, and one that I will continue to make, because I care for you deeply.” Nicolò had now forgotten how to do anything at all. “You are so willing to learn and you work hard to correct past wrongs, those are traits of yours that I admire and wish I possessed. I am very, very lucky to be with you and I want us to be in a relationship of equals.”

“Are you going to ask me to stop doing more than my share of work?” Nicolò asked, rather indelicately.

“I know that that is one of the ways in which you show your care,” Yusuf said diplomatically. “There is, however….”

Nicolò sighed. “Yes. There is a difference between doing such a thing from kindness and having such care stem from some sort of…perceived failing. Or imbalance.”

“Exactly,” Yusuf said. “Nicolò, I am not going to talk about forgiveness with you.”

“I think it is best if we do not,” Nicolò said. It was getting increasingly difficult for him to maintain eye contact.

“There is so much goodness in you,” Yusuf said quietly. “I have decided that you are worthy of my care and affection, and that you are who I would like to spend my many, many days with. Is that something you will be able to accept right now, or will you argue with me on this?”

“No,” Nicolò said slowly. “I do not think I will argue that.”

“It is not a question of worthiness,” Yusuf said. “Who must we prove that to? Nobody but ourselves.” He had immediately relaxed upon Nicolò’s assertion that he was happy to accept Yusuf’s care, and Nicolò saved this knowledge away for later. He hated to think that he had ever given Yusuf the impression that he would not accept Yusuf’s affection; he needed to dispel Yusuf’s fear, to impress on him that he had simply not been in a place where he could receive any affection at all, but it was not a topic to address now.

“Andromache and Quýnh,” Nicolò interjected. “Perhaps God.”

“They consider us worthy partners already,” Yusuf countered, “if only because they think us equally dense in matters of the heart, and we are together now, yes? We have already proved ourselves to God.”

Nicolò thought about this for a moment. “Yusuf,” he said, “you may very well be one of the smartest men I have ever met.”

“You have not met very many men, my dear Nicolò,” and Nicolò had to stop that immediately, because they had just spoken about being equals and as equals, Nicolò would never let anyone disparage Yusuf within his earshot, even if the person being so disparaging was Yusuf himself.

“You know as well as I do that I have met many men in my many years of life. I still think that you are one of the cleverest. We will not speak of forgiveness or worthiness, my love, but instead I will say that I am blessed to have you and blessed to have been chosen by you.”

“I cannot call you that,” Yusuf said. He abruptly tried to pull his hand loose but that would not do, either, and so Nicolò quickly bent his head to kiss Yusuf’s knuckles as a tacit apology for pushing too far. “Not yet. I…I am sorry, but I - ”

“You do not need to apologize to me for that. May I now say some things to you?”

“Of course, of course, Nicolò, you need not ask.”

“I have learned some manners in our years together,” Nicolò said waspishly, and once his goal of making Yusuf laugh, or at least smile, had been achieved, he deemed it appropriate to return to a more serious tone. “I just…I do not know what I wanted to say, now, except for that I love you. As you have said, we need not prove ourselves to anyone. So, we will be together in whatever way is best for us.”

“It is very easy to say that when it is just us in a house,” Yusuf interjected.

“That it is. But Yusuf, I thought I was fighting against God to love you. Now that I have realized that I am not, things are easy. I do not like it, but I am skilled in combat, and if fighting men is something I must do, sometimes, to love you, then that is how it will be.”

“You are ridiculous, you do know that?” But Yusuf was laughing again, and really, Nicolò could never ask for anything more.

“We are here now, yes?”

“There is some poetry I think I must show you, although I find it surprising that you have not encountered it by now,” Yusuf said, “and perhaps you will finally truly realize that God is not such an obstacle, as it were.”

“I realized eventually!” It came out almost as a whine, much to Nicolò’s embarrassment, and Yusuf was now laughing so hard that he was shaking the entire table.

“Come,” he said finally, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I believe that I promised you a proper bed, yes? Get properly dressed so we can go to purchase one.”

Normally, Nicolò would have thought in that moment how beautiful Yusuf looked, because he was always his most radiant when he was lit up with joy, and then thought about how desperately he wanted to kiss him, but now, when this familiar pattern of thought began, Nicolò suddenly realized that he was now allowed to kiss Yusuf and did not just have to think about it, and as a result he leaned forward and caught Yusuf’s face almost clumsily in his hands and kissed him, swallowing his laughter.

“You are so beautiful like that,” he said, “you are so beautiful when you smile, and I am so glad to finally tell you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i realize this may not be quite as, shall we say, exciting as some may have hoped. however! this captures the beginning of a relationship longer than i am legitimately able to conceptualize, and there is absolutely no way that many, many conversations like this were not had, and because this is a self indulgent fic first and foremost i wanted to put this conversation in to tie it off.
> 
> as always, my friends, thank you for your kindness, your patience, your time, and your support. it's been. well. i got covid, and now my family's basically a melting nuclear reactor, but the point is we are here! it's done! i've completed this and it is entirely thanks to your kindness and support! and a special thank you to anosrepasi, who has a) given me an AU idea i will absolutely torture you all with, it'll be fun, and b) was the one who kicked my ass into gear today. she's a hero. please, my friends, if you enjoyed this, go to read her work, as it is truly masterful.


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